Take Care
by wrighterbynight
Summary: Tris is keeping a secret that could potentially be putting her life at risk. She tries to deal with it by seeking the help of a gorgeous self-defense instructor, with whom she connects with on a level that's deeper than student-teacher. As her training progresses, so do her feelings for the only man who can provide her with protection. Eventually Four/Tris. Also AU.
1. Chapter 1

_The lights flicked on and I slowly blinked my eyes open, which was strange, because I didn't remember laying down, and I definitely didn't remember falling asleep. I sat up on a couch that I've never seen before and scanned my squinted eyes over a room that I didn't recognize. There wasn't much to be seen. Just four gray walls and- that's it. Aside from myself and the single piece of furniture beneath me, the rest of the room was completely empty. There wasn't even a window. What kind of weird place was this?_

_The sound of a door slam startled me out of my thoughts. I shot off of the sofa and turned around to see a tall man standing in a doorway that I'm fairly certain didn't exist until now. All of his clothes were dark, and the hood of his jacket draped over his face kept his identity a secret. He threw a bundle of keys and a wallet on a small round table near the door, reminding me of someone who just got home from work, and turned his back toward me as he pulled his arms out of the sleeves of his pullover. Once his jacket was off, I knew who he was just by looking at the back of his head._

_He turned again, this time facing me. His lips were formed into a tight, unhappy line, and his jaw stayed constantly flexed as he clenched his teeth together. He was obviously furious about something, and judging from his wicked stare, I knew that I was the reason._

_"You," he growled. "You disgusting slut."_

_His words shocked me to say the least. Out of all the things that I could have possibly done to make him angry, sleeping around didn't come to mind. I mean, why would it? I was a virgin._

_His false accusation pissed me off. "Don't talk to me like that," I demanded. "Don't ever say that again, Peter." I mentally applauded myself for keeping my voice steady. Feeling this confident was new to me. _

_The muscles in his face finally started to relax, but other than that, nothing happened. We just stood in our places across the room, watching each other like two cowboys in an old Western standoff, both of us waiting patiently for the other to make a move. _

_Then without any warning, Peter charged at me. I turned to run away as quickly as I could, but my legs only moved at a frustratingly slow pace. Peter caught me by my wrist in no time. He pulled me toward him until he could reach the collar of my shirt, and once the fabric was crinkled under his giant man-paws, he lifted me up and shoved my back against one of the dim gray walls. The impact of the drywall against my spine was hard enough to knock the wind out of me, and I started making repulsive gasping sounds in an attempt to find my breath. Peter didn't bother to stop to make sure that I was okay. He released my shirt, but only to replace his tight grip around my small, fragile wrists. He pinned them against the wall over my head, adding the feeling of insecure exposure to the struggle of trying to breathe. _

_Finally my lungs started to work again, and I inhaled a large, much needed breath of air. But Peter didn't let me enjoy it. He transferred both of my wrists into one of his hands and used his other to encircle a suffocating and painful clench around my throat, forcing me to experience the torture of not being able to breathe for the second time in less than a minute. His dark brown eyes were glued to me as my face started to turn blue, but at this point I didn't believe that Peter actually saw what he was doing. In the midst of his rage, his mind had traveled somewhere far away from here. I kicked my legs frantically since I didn't have access to my hands, but somehow I missed him every time. I didn't understand, I mean he was right in front of me. With nothing left to do, my eyes wandered to the wall that I could see over his shoulder: the wall where the door used to be. It wasn't there anymore. My heart sank as I realized that even if I was able to get out of Peter's death grip, I wouldn't have anywhere to go. I was stuck in this exit-less room with him, and he was blessed with an endless number of chances to kill me. _

_"__Peter," I croaked, flicking my eyes back toward his. His unchanged expression was all the evidence I needed to know that he didn't hear me. But still, I tried. "Stop," I pleaded. His fingers only tightened around my neck._

_My head felt light from the lack of oxygen, my vision was blurring and my eyelids were too heavy to keep open anymore. Peter's merciless glare was the last thing I saw before I blacked out._

* * *

><p>I woke up with the same body-jerk that people do when they dream that they're about to fall off a cliff. My eyes shot open, for real this time, and slowly I remembered that I was in my fourth period calculus class. Never have I ever been so happy to be in a room with a normal amount of windows and doors. I took a deep breath to calm myself down, but also to remember what it felt like to breathe. That nightmare felt too real. I grazed my fingertips over the skin on my neck and let out a sigh of relief when I was sure that it hadn't actually been touched.<p>

"Good morning, sleeping beauty," Christina, in her usual seat to my left, greeted sarcastically. As I turned my head to look at her, I took a peak around the room, registering that we were the only two students still there. I guess the dismissal bell rang while I was getting choked by Peter.

My eyes finally landed on Christina, and I saw that her eyebrows were furrowed.

"What?" I asked with my groggy just-woke-up voice.

"Did you have a bad dream?" she asked with a chuckle. She must have seen me fly out of my seat when I woke up.

"Yeah," I admitted, then covered the truth with a lie. "It was weird. I was in a field, and all these crows were like, attacking me and I couldn't get away from..." I stopped when I realized she wasn't listening anymore. I loved Christina, but her attention span was the length of a squirrel's. We both ignored the end of my improvised story, and I finished with a question instead. "Did I miss anything?"

Christina flipped a few pages in her red spiral notebook before closing it, then placed her pencil on top of the stack. "Just the entire review for the test on Monday," she answered. "Not like it matters, though. I would've slept too if I was as good as math as you."

"You rhymed," I couldn't resist pointing out.

She shrugged with a smile, picked her backpack off of the floor, and started packing up her supplies. "I'm a poet and didn't know it," she added.

I followed her lead and began shoving my own books (they served more as pillows than as learning material) inside of my backpack. Once our bags were stuffed, Christina and I stood in unison and headed toward the door. Upon exiting, Mr. Eaton- not only my math teacher, but the best one I've ever had- stopped me for a minute to lecture me about sleeping in his class. I didn't blame him. It wasn't the first time that I did it. Hell, it wasn't even the first time that I did it this week. He's been letting it slide for a while and it was only a matter of time before I pushed it too far. I sincerely apologized and promised him that it wouldn't happen again, and even though I'm sure he didn't believe me, he still let me leave. His patience was one of the reasons why I liked him so much. Even though he was old and gray, he still remembered what it was like to be my age.

"Is everything okay at home?" Christina asked when we stopped at her locker.

I looked at her, surprised. "Why wouldn't it be?"

She twisted the nob three times in alternating directions and tugged at the bottom of it. It failed to open, so she tried the combination again.

"You've just been sleeping in school a lot," she said. "I feel like maybe something's keeping you up at night. Have your parents been fighting or anything?" She pulled her lock again, but it still remained shut. "Oh, come on!" she added, pounding her fist against her locker.

I let myself laugh at her, and at the ridiculous thought of my parents fighting. I couldn't even remember the last time I witnessed either of my parents get mad, let alone raise their voice in an argument. The two of them were good together, and one of the only couples I had to look up to. They never did anything without talking to each other about it first, and they held a lot of the same values, so it was a rare occasion when they disagreed on something.

I decided to leave Christina's question unanswered.

"Are you sure you're putting in the right combination?" I asked after she tried her lock for the third time.

"Twenty-three, twelve, twenty-three," Christina chanted. "It's the easiest combination in the world. I think the lock's just stuck again."

I pushed her aside with my hip and grabbed hold of the cold little item. I turned the dial to the numbers she mentioned, following the rules of left-right-left and skipping over the second number once, then heaved with all of my might, but ended up getting the same disappointing result as Christina. She groaned and cursed under her breath.

"We're gonna be late for volleyball practice," I sighed, "again."

"No, no we're not," she said with a determined look on her face. She started looking around the hall in hopes that an idea would pop out of thin air. Christina was usually a pretty quick thinker when she wanted to be, so I leaned against the locker next to hers and waited for her to have an epiphany.

Within a few seconds, her eyes locked on something behind me. "Ah-ha," she purred.

I looked over my shoulder. Walking toward us (well not exactly toward us, but in our general direction) was Tobias Eaton, or as most people around school called him, Four. I fell into the category of "most people" since I also referred to him by his nickname, even though I had no idea where it originated from. There were rumors about it, of course, ranging from "could be true" to "absolutely not." The one that I heard the most, as well as the one that almost everybody agreed was true, was that Four got hammered one night at a prom after-party during his sophomore year and had one-after-the-other sex with four different senior girls. I didn't go to Hopewell High when Four was a sophomore; I was still in eighth grade at the time, so I had no way of knowing if that really happened. But whether it be fact or not, it definitely wasn't hard to believe.

My opinion of Four was the same as every other girl's at Hopewell High: painfully attractive, mysteriously quiet, yet too intimidating to approach. It made me wonder how those senior girls at the prom after-party managed to break through his double-coated shell. Maybe he wasn't as scary when he was drunk... Anyway, as a senior now, Four stood at about six foot even, and his body looked like it was sculpted by Adonis himself. As far as his wardrobe went, I'd only ever seen him come to school in solid-colored T-shirts or the occasional polo. Today he was actually dressed in one of those rare polo's: a black one from Ralph Lauren's collection, matched with a pair of dark blue jeans. The fabric of his shirt was deliciously compressed around his beefy arms, shoulders, back, and-

Crap. His brown puppy eyes were staring me down, silently warning me that I was caught in my daydream. My cheeks instantly started to burn, and I saw the corners of his mouth turn up in a smirk before I was able to look away. How embarrassing. I rubbed my forehead with my index finger and thumb and closed my eyes, wishing that when I opened them again I would be anywhere else but here. But of course that wasn't the case. When I pried my eyelids open, Christina was still in front of me and Four was still coming closer. I could hear his boots clink every time he stepped.

"Hey, Four," Christina called out. "Could you help me out with this real quick?"

I took a deep breath and let it out through my nose, mentally preparing myself for the awkward situation that Christina was unknowingly about to put me in. My whole body felt tense, but I wasn't sure if it was from still feeling embarrassed or from anticipating the presence of the hottest man to ever live. Probably a mixture of both. I could sense Four's body (and smell his musky cologne) once he was standing close enough behind me. I raised my hand to check out my nail beds and dedicated my eyes to them as if they were the most interesting thing in the world.

"What's up?" he asked in his beautifully matured voice. God, it made me melt.

"My lock is jammed," Christina went on, as if Four's demeanor had no effect on her. "Think you could give it a try?"

After brief hesitation, Four said, "Sure."

A moment after his reply, I felt his callused hand fondling the small of my back. I jerked my head up instinctively. What did he think he was doing? We didn't know each other like that. We've never even spoken before. He was no more than a stranger to me, and if he wasn't so damn attractive I would have been completely repulsed. Why did he think it was okay to touch me? Why did he want to touch me in the first place? Was he into me? Obviously not, I was too young for him. But _why_ was he touching me? Those questions plus a million more raced through my mind in the time it took Four to explain himself.

He leaned his head in close to mine, and with his lips being no more than an inch away from my ear, he whispered politely, "Excuse me."

Well, don't I feel stupid. The gesture meant nothing; I was just in his way.

I pressed my back against the wall of lockers to give him some room to work. When I moved, Four's hand retreated to his side. He took an inch of a step forward and reached for the lock with his left arm, generously giving me a front row view of his well-defined bicep, then pulled the contraption apart with one swift yank. Christina squealed in delight and opened her locker door.

"Thank you, Four!" she clapped. "I owe you one."

Four gave her a small half-smile in replacement of saying "you're welcome," and glimpsed at me one last time before sauntering away. Christina started transferring the things that she didn't need from her backpack into the tiny metal space, mumbling something about how much homework she had to do over the weekend. I nodded absentmindedly, my real attention still on Four. He stopped a few feet down the hall to talk to a teacher whose name I couldn't remember. I knew I was openly admiring him again, but I didn't care. I couldn't stop. He smiled about something mentioned in the conversation, then glanced in my direction. The eye contact was awkward, but I didn't want to be the first one to withdraw. Apparently neither did he. So we just stood there, burning holes into each other until one of us backed down. It reminded me of the standoff I had in my dream with Peter.

Technically Four lost our staring contest by being the first to break eye contact, but to be fair, he didn't completely stop looking at me. His eyes smoothly traveled down my body at a tauntingly slow space, only stopping once they landed on my hips. Anyone else would have taken it as a compliment, but it made me feel self-conscious. I didn't have what was considered a "nice body." I was pretty thin, with minimum curves, and I certainly wasn't anything worth drooling over. Four was probably only doing it to get back at me for staring at him earlier. I grabbed the hem of my shirt and pulled it down to cover up a slither of skin that was peaking out around my mid-drift. His eyes briefly returned to mine before catching up with the teacher he was supposed to be listening to.

Christina slapped my arm with one of her books. "Damn you!"

My hand reached up to cover the spot that she hit, even though it didn't hurt.

"What?" I asked.

"I saw Four checking you out!" she laughed.

"What?" I repeated. "No, he wasn't-"

"Mmhm," Christina hummed. "You're a lucky girl, Tris. A very lucky girl."

I rolled my eyes but contradicted myself by smiling anyway. Maybe Christina was right. Maybe Four wasn't just trying to make me feel uncomfortable. Maybe he liked what he saw.

"Hey, babe." The phrase came from behind me.

The unanticipated sound of his voice made my skin crawl. I slowly rubbed my palms over my arms to get rid of the uninvited goosebumps. It wasn't my usual reaction to him, but I think my recent nightmare- that featured him as a guest star- justified it. I looked over my shoulder to come face-to-face with my attacker, or as he was more commonly known in the real world, my boyfriend.

I flashed a convincing smile. "Hey, Peter."

His lips covered mine with a sloppy kiss, penetrating my mouth with his tongue. I hated when he kissed me like that in front of other people. I felt bad for Christina, who's witnessed Peter's inappropriate public displays of affection more times than she could count. The unpleasant kiss felt like it went on forever, but I didn't dare pull away from him; that would only make him mad.

Christina cleared her throat loudly and Peter parted from me to narrow his eyes at her. "You choking or something?" he remarked angrily. I almost laughed at the irony.

"Just waiting for you lovebirds to finish up," she told him. "Tris and I have somewhere to be."

"Where?" he asked a little too quickly.

"Volleyball practice," I answered. "It's Friday, Peter, you knew that."

He looked suspiciously back and fourth between Christina and me. "Right," he reluctantly agreed.

Christina shut her locker with a bang and installed the troublesome lock, then raised her eyebrows at me. "You ready to go?"

I nodded, eager to get away from Peter. It wasn't fair to feel so unsafe around him just because of something I dreamed that he did, but it didn't change the way that I felt. All I could think was that I needed some space.

Unfortunately Peter didn't read minds. He barricaded me between his body and the lockers by putting both of his arms out to complete the square. He leaned closer to me until our foreheads were touching. "Are you still coming to dinner tonight?" he whispered.

"Of course," I said. Dinner was about three hours away. I would be good by then.

My reply made Peter smile, and he rewarded me with a trail of intimate kisses down my neck. I tilted my head to the side to give him room, looking at Christina over his shoulder. She was rightfully rolling her eyes. I patted Peter's shoulder to let him know that he could stop.

He straightened himself out and rotated toward Christina. "Sorry, Chris," he said half-heartedly. "Is this making you jealous?"

"Peter," I scolded.

"God, no." Christina flapped her hands in the air as if she was swatting his comment away. "I think it's good that you're giving your girlfriend so much attention. You know, be_-four_ someone else tries to snatch her up." She emphasized the "four," giving a very obvious hint about what happened when Peter wasn't around.

Peter didn't care for her joke. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Christina smirked and winked at me, but she was the only one having fun. I shook my head at her and mouthed the words "don't tell him." Peter's eyes shot back to me, just missing my secret warning. I matched his gaze and shrugged, trying to portray my innocence. He didn't buy into it.

"We'll talk at dinner," he threatened, then left the scene without saying anything else.

I let out a breath that I didn't even realize I was holding. Being around him made me feel so intense, and now I really wasn't looking forward to our evening alone.

"'We'll talk at dinner,'" Christina quoted, "Why is he such a hard-ass all the time?"

"He just gets jealous," I said, which was true. Peter's always had insecurity issues when it came to me, even though I've never purposely given him a reason to. It was just in his nature.

Christina nodded, not really giving much thought to what I said. She walked over to me and linked her arm through mine. "Let's go to practice," she suggested, and together we began our stroll to the locker room.

After a while of silence, Christina thought of a question. "Is that what's been keeping you up at night?" she asked. "You and Peter fighting?"

I bit down on the inside of my cheek. "Not really," I said. "I mean, no more than any other couple."

She nodded, keeping her face straight ahead. For once, I wished that Christina would have looked at me. Had she seen my reaction, she would have caught on to my lie (she once told me that biting the inside of my cheek was my "tell"). If she saw, she would have stopped us right there in the hallway and demanded that I tell her the truth. She would have given me the chance to finally lay my secrets out on the metaphorical table. All of my problems probably would have ended in that hallway if Christina had only taken a two-second glance in my direction. But contrary to Christina's earlier statement, I wasn't that lucky. Her eyes remained steered away from me, and I made the decision to keep my mouth shut for now.


	2. Chapter 2

**First of all, I'm really sorry that it took me forever to update. It's the oldest excuse in the book but I really have been busy with school work (COLLEGE BLOWS) and this chapter didn't flow as easily to me as the first chapter did. But anyway, I hope you guys think it's worth the wait! And to answer a few questions, Four and Mr. Eaton are related in this story, but I didn't really elaborate on that in the first chapter because I want it to be something that Tris and Four talk about in the future. As for the question about the abuse, I think this chapter will clear some things up.**

* * *

><p>"Great job ladies. I'll see you all next week." Coach Johanna blew her whistle, signaling that we were dismissed.<p>

The team and I headed back to the locker room after a strenuous hour and a half of squatting, serving, setting, and spiking. My legs felt like rubber, but I didn't really mind; I kind of liked the feeling of being sore after a good workout. Christina, on the other hand, couldn't stop complaining.

"Is it just me, or is Johanna trying to kill us?" she whined once we all made it inside the reverberant walls of the locker room. Half of the other girls moaned in agreement.

"Hey, at least you're getting an ass out of it," Molly, our best server, said as she examined her own in the mirror. Christina waddled over to join her, angling herself so she could see her backside in the reflection.

"It is kind of nice, isn't it?" she asked pompously.

Welcome to the girls' locker room, where we strut around in sweaty sports bras and talk about our butt progress. I rolled my eyes and threw my dirty towel over Christina's head. She quickly brushed it off and pitched it back to me.

"Hey now," she cautioned. "Don't be bitter. Yours is coming along too, Tris."

I laughed and sat on one of the wooden benches, peeled off my shoes and knee pads, and tucked them away in my tiny drawstring backpack. The rest of the girls started changing out of their practice jerseys.

"You were on fire today, Tris," Lynn praised. "No offense, but I haven't seen you like that in a while."

"None taken," I promised. "And thank you."

Practice had gone exceptionally well for me that day. Most of my spikes landed in bounds, my sets went exactly where I wanted them to go, and I even performed my first successful jump-serve. Christina asked me what my secret was, and I replied with a joke about steroids. She took that as an opportunity to come up with her own conclusion: I was upset with Peter and had to take my anger out on the court, which in turn upped my game. Sure, Chris. It had nothing to do with my strive to impress an imaginary Four that I pictured sitting in the stands.

As they finished up, my teammates started filing out of the locker room, wishing everyone a fun and safe weekend before the door closed behind them. Eventually Christina and I were the only ones left. That seemed to happen a lot with us.

"I'm just gonna shower here," she announced, pulling an extra change of clothes out of her backpack. "Sick of my mom and sis taking up all the hot water."

"They still do that?" I chuckled.

She shot me an annoyed look and nodded. "Old habits die hard."

I stood up, swinging my flimsy bag over my shoulder. "I'll head out I guess. Got a hot date tonight."

"Yeah." Christina cringed. "Super hot."

I threw my hands out and let them drop. They landed loudly on my thighs. "Why do you and Peter not like each other?"

"Seriously?" She asked, then realized that I was, in fact, being serious. "I don't know," she answered honestly. "We just don't click."

That had to be the lamest excuse. It didn't matter if they "clicked" or not. Any two people could be nice to each other if they just made the effort. I almost said something to lecture Christina about how bad that answer was, but I decided against it. I didn't have the energy to fight with her today.

"Have fun tonight," she added, as if it made up for the way she felt about my boyfriend. A few moments later she disappeared behind the wall that separated the shower stalls from the front of the locker room.

I didn't leave immediately. I still wanted to get out of my smelly jersey, but I couldn't do it while Christina or anyone else was around. I waited until a heard running water, then carefully slipped out of my shirt, grabbing it by the hem with crossed arms, and wincing as I stretch my stomach to get it over my head. I tossed it aside once it was off and analyzed myself in the mirror.

Yesterday it looked better than the day before, and today it looked better than yesterday, but overall the bruise was still pretty bad. It was deceiving, though. Looked much worse than it felt. Mixed with shades of black and purple, and freckled with yellow spots, it took up the entirety of my right hipbone. I ran my thumb over the darkest spot, lightly pressing on it to see how bad it hurt. Painful, but tolerable. It wasn't the worst I've ever had.

I pulled on a flowy blue tank top with a little more ease. It wasn't quite long enough to cover the bruise, but it was the only clean article of clothing I had left with me, so it would have to do. Besides, I was only walking to my car, and everyone had already left school by now. I gathered my things again and used my good hip to push the door open, stepping into the hot afternoon air. The heat made me dread the ten minute walk to the parking lot on the other end of campus. I paused to throw my hair (which was much too thick and long for this kind of weather) into a high ponytail, then continued my way down the street.

A portion of the sidewalk ahead was blocked off with bright orange traffic cones due to some kind of construction, so I crossed the road in order to avoid it. Small boutiques and hole-in-the-wall restaurants lined this side of the street, and it occurred to me for the first time that I've never stepped foot in any of them. I peaked through the windows of the stores as I passed by, promising myself that one day I would be a contributing costumer to them all before graduation rolled around. That gave me two years; it was doable. A white dress being modeled by an equally white manikin in the window of one of the boutiques tempted me to start living up to that promise right away, but it didn't take me long to realize that, as pretty as the dress was, I would never have an occasion special enough to wear it to. Maybe I would if Peter still took me on dates to fancy restaurants, but he hasn't done that in months, and I felt like now we were too far past that stage in our relationship to start the tradition back up.

Feeling disheartened, I moved on to the next window. This business was different from the others, not a clothing store or a café. The room inside was practically empty aside from a few punching bags stored in the corner and three men standing in the middle of the floor, which was compiled of a bunch of foam mats put together. Two of the men were facing each other, fists held up, legs spread apart. One had his back toward me and the other was a blonde guy named Eric; I recognized him from school, but I didn't know him very well. They were wearing matching black uniforms, and kickboxing gloves covered their knuckles. The third man was standing off to the side, watching the other two carefully. He made some interesting hand gestures, and when he was done, the men in black started to fight.

Eric made the first move. He threw a swift jab toward the other fighter's head, but his rival steered clear of impact by flinching to the side. He grabbed Eric's arm in retaliation and punched him twice in the face, so quickly that a blink would have caused me to miss it. Eric stumbled backward and readjusted his jaw by opening and closing his mouth. The man reffing the match pointed one hand at the unknown challenger. I wasn't sure what that meant, but the two fighters nodded and returned to their original positions. They continued with the mediator's permission.

The two men side-stepped around an imaginary circle, attentively reading each other's faces, waiting for the perfect time to strike. As they slowly paced around one another, I started seeing the anterior features of the man who had his back to me. His chest, those arms, that jawline... How did it take me this long to catch on?

It was Four.

My heart fluttered a little faster when I realized that it was him. It was kind of an exciting moment for me since this was my first time ever seeing him outside of school. I wondered if anyone else, besides Eric, knew about Four's violent hobby. I doubted it. He seemed like the kind of person who liked to keep his life as private as he could. Very non-high school.

Eric broke the side-stepping pattern by attacking Four again. He faked a hit with his left hand, which Four blocked, then Eric surprised him by driving his other fist into his ribcage. It made me shudder, gave me the urge to run in there and throw Eric away from him myself. Four leaned forward in a natural reaction of pain and Eric generously took this opportunity to shove his knee into Four's face. Four's hands shot up to protect himself, and the knee ended up only making contact with his palms. He caught Eric by the ankle and twisted his leg, making Eric do a complete 360 in the air and land rigidly on is spine. I felt like I was watching a fight scene in a movie. Eric stood back up, but before he could do anything else, Four gave him a roundhouse kick to his obliques and Eric went down again.

Bummer. The match was over after that. Four looked like he was still ready to go, but Eric could barely sit up without wincing and reaching for his side. I felt a strange sense of pride watching Four emerge as the victor of the fight. There was something kind of hot about a guy who could beat some ass.

Four, being the gentleman that he was, ducked his head under Eric's arm and lifted him off of the floor. The man who was was reffing brought in a chair, and the winner helped the wounded over to it until Eric was able to sit down. Four said something to him and patted his shoulder, and Eric smiled but it wasn't sincere. He probably wasn't used to losing. Four stepped to the side so the third man could start examining Eric's injury.

It was time for me to finish my boiling trek to the parking lot. But right as I was about to leave, Four shifted his attention to the front window. I was caught lurking. Again. His brown puppy-dog eyes locked with my spheres of green, bringing me back to the similar encounter we had in the hallway earlier that day. Maybe this would be the closest he and I ever came to communication? I squeezed my bottom lip between my teeth and hoped that I was wrong.

For the second time today, he was the one to back down. He blinked and turned his back toward me, but before his face was completely out of my sight, I saw his lips curve into his version of a smile.

* * *

><p>I absentmindedly twirled the spaghetti in front of me around my fork, creating a ball of saucey noodles that somehow got messier with every rotation. Half of the dish still sat in my plate, but I was already full from the salad and garlic bread. I kept eating, though. Didn't want to offended Peter.<p>

He sat across from me at the table, cleaning a speck of sauce off of his lips with a napkin. Over the span of our relationship, I've learned that Peter was a really clean eater. Bite, wipe, drink. It didn't matter if he was slurping spaghetti or munching on a bag of potato chips. He had a routine, and he stuck to it.

"Do you like it?" Peter asked, referring to the dinner.

I smiled and nodded. "It's really good," I said, and to prove it I took another bite.

He reached for my hand across the table and intertwined his fingers with mine. I put my silverware down and focused on him. He had a small smile on his face, with soft droopy eyes. Most people would call it a "look of love," but I knew better than that. He only gave me this look when he wanted something.

"I have an idea," he stated, "on how you can repay me."

Ugh. He was ruining it. The thoughtful dinner, the romance of the evening. It was all going downhill from here.

"Repay you?"

"Yeah," he continued. "I mean, I cooked you this awesome dinner. I think I've earned some kind of reward."

Of course he thought that. He never did anything nice without expecting something in return.

"Like what?" I asked plainly.

He ran his thumb along the ticklish skin of my palm. "You know..."

I did know, but I shrugged my shoulders as if I didn't. Another thing that I've learned was that playing dumb was better than rejecting him.

"Come on, babe," Peter begged. "We've been together for like, five months and we still haven't had sex yet. Do you know how lame that is?"

"Seven months," I corrected. "And I think it's reasonable considering I've never done it before."

He unlaced our fingers and pulled his hand back to his side of the table.

"This is bullshit," he announced. "You're my girlfriend. You're suppose to want to have sex with me."

_Maybe if you weren't constantly pressuring me..._

"Why don't you?" he asked angrily.

"I-"

"Are you still mad at me?" he interrupted. "For what happened the other night. Are you seriously still mad?"

I thought back to the incident he was talking about. It happened last Tuesday. Peter got in an argument with his dad, and afterward he called me, asking if I could come over. He sounded upset, which made me concerned, and I drove over right away. He was in his room when I arrived, so I let myself in and climbed the stairs until I was standing in his doorway. Peter was laying on his bed, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling. I walked over to him, sat at his feet, and asked him what happened. He explained the situation to me in minor detail. He and his dad had a confrontation over a hunch that his dad had about Peter smoking weed. After a while of interrogation, Peter eventually admitted to it, and his dad got pissed. Apparently a fist fight broke out between the father and son, and in the end Peter was told that he had to move out. Obviously that didn't pull through, given that Peter was still laying in his bed.

I made the mistake of caring more about Peter smoking weed than I did about the rest of the story. I started yelling at him for getting high, and for keeping it a secret from me. He got mad in return and started shouting over me. I assumed that his parents weren't home since nobody barged in to see what the hell was going on. We kept yelling at each other, neither of us listening to what the other was saying, and soon enough, Peter wasn't dealing with it anymore. He stopped me from using my voice by covering my mouth with his rough hand. He turned me around and walked me forward until my body was forced against his door, with the doorknob driven into my hip. It was the first time that Peter's ever gotten physically violent with me, and I didn't know what to do. All I _could_ do was shut up and wait for him to be finished.

I ran my hand through my hair, itching to pull it all out in frustration. To be honest, I _was_ still mad. I had every right to be. He hurt me, both physically and emotionally, and I couldn't just get over something like that and pretend it never happened. I had the bruise to constantly remind me that everything was real.

"... or does it have to do with what Christina said?" he continued.

I froze. I've been waiting for him to bring that up all night, but dinner was going so well (up until this point) that I thought he might have forgotten about it.

"Four?" Peter wondered.

"I don't even know Four," I told him. It was sort of true.

"You better not," he confirmed. "Don't ever talk to him."

So far I haven't broken Peter's wish. Not technically. Longing stares were not the same thing as speaking to each other.

It was my turn to extend my hand across the table. But Peter snatched his away before I could grab it.

"Are you attracted to him?" He didn't even try to hide his jealousy.

The right answer was easy. 'No.' That was the answer that Peter wanted to hear, the answer that would have kept me safe. I knew the right answer as soon as the question fell out of Peter's mouth, but I didn't vocalize it fast enough. I think Peter saw my face flush, added it to my silence, and came up with an answer for himself. An answer that was very, very wrong.

The back of his hand stung my cheek as it flashed across my face. My head jerked to the side, and the next thing I knew, I was being pulled out of my chair. My back was thrown against a wall and Peter stood in front of me with his fingers digging into my shoulders. I looked up at him, afraid. My Peter was gone. I could tell by the wild look in his eyes. He had been taken over by some internal evil twin that only came out when he lost his temper.

"Peter," I said. I tried to push his arms away from me, but they didn't budge.

He pressed his forehead against mine and breathed aggressively in my face. His hands slithered down to my hips, scraping the bruise he left earlier that week. I winced in pain. Peter took it the wrong way.

"It's those faces you make when I touch you," he growled. "Why do you do that?"

His hand slid over the button of my jeans, then the zipper. He started rubbing me between my thighs.

"Why do you reject me?"

"Peter, stop," I demanded. I squirmed to get away from him but it was no use. I was trapped.

"You love me," he went on, applying more pressure to each rub. "Show me how much you love me."

That's how it's been with Peter recently. It was never "I love you," only "tell me you love me." He needed to hear it more than he liked to say it back. There was a time when Peter used to tell me he loved every chance he got, but I couldn't remember when the last one was. It felt like forever ago.

"I do love you," I said as calmly as I could.

"Then have sex with me."

"Not yet." I felt like crying. "Not like this."

He removed his hands and took a step back so his forehead was no longer on mine. We looked at each other for a long moment. For some reason I wanted to hug him. I wanted to hold him until the Peter I knew and loved came back into the picture. I wanted to save him from his temper. I hesitantly raised my hand to touch his chest. He was still breathing heavily, his heart racing.

Just when I thought he was relaxed enough to approach, he snapped again. He shoved my shoulders against the wall, sending a sharp pain down my shoulder blades. I held in a whimper.

He leaned forward until his mouth was pressed against my ear. "Get out," he hissed. And with that being said, he turned around and abandoned the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts and a throbbing shoulder.

I've had enough of this. I was one of the few kids who made it through elementary and middle school without getting bullied, so I wasn't about to let my own boyfriend push me around now that I was half way through high school. I stood up straight and rolled my shoulders, ignoring the discomfort that I felt in my left one. This had to end. I added another promise to the list I started earlier by the shops across street from Hopewell High: Peter would either get his shit together, or I would learn how to defend myself.

Starting today, Peter would never leave another mark on me again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you guys for your reviews and patience (both with my taking forever to post and waiting for actual Fourtris moments to start happening). I hope this chapter satisfies some of your ship needs. I promise the next one will have more depth!**

Pretending my shoulder didn't hurt like hell was the hardest part of going back to school on Monday. I could deal with the classes, with Christina's too enthusiastic (and highly exaggerated) story about a party she went to over the weekend. I could even handle actively avoiding Peter. But my shoulder- it was killing me. Throughout the day I would momentarily forget about the sore spot, only to remind myself a second later by accidentally hitting it against a wall or something. It took everything in me not to curl into a ball and be done with the day.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Christina said, plopping her tray next to mine at our usual lunch table. "How was dinner with the devil?"

Any other day I would have snapped at her for her choice of reference. But today I had to agree. "It was fine," I muttered.

Our friends, Al and Will, joined us before Christina could press any further. Al sat by me, and Will took the available seat next to my friend, of course. He had a thing for Christina; it was obvious to everyone except her.

"Peter's looking for you," was the first thing that came out of Will's mouth. I wanted to punch him in his stupid face for being the second person at the table to bring Peter up, and I probably would have if my shoulder didn't hurt so bad.

"Of course he is," Christina mumbled under her breath.

I covered my eyes with my hands, rubbing the creases next to my nose.

"He seemed kind of panicked," Al added. "Are you two fighting?" Aspiration hid beneath the question. Poor Al, I knew, had a desperate crush on me. He tried not let it show, but I wasn't as oblivious as Christina was with Will. Sometimes I wished that I could reciprocate Al's feelings. He was a nice guy, a giant teddy bear that would treat me like the angel he made me out to be. But I couldn't look at him as anything more than a friend. My current boyfriend proved that soft and cuddly wasn't my type.

"Yeah," I said to Al. Though true, it was a bad answer. I immediately regretted it when I saw Al's eyes light up. It gave him a false sense of hope.

Christina changed the subject by feeding the boys the story I already heard about her weekend party experience. I stayed silent while they commented at the appropriate times and threw in their own tales of the past two days. I tried to pay attention, but the task was almost impossible when the last person I wanted to see stepped through the swinging doors of the cafeteria. His eyes found me within a matter of seconds.

Time to face my problems.

I pushed myself to my feet and told my friends that I'd be right back. Then I made my way over to Peter. To my surprise, he greeted me with a hug. I kept my arms by my side as he held me, feeling awkward and uncomfortable.

Peter and I didn't talk over the weekend. He called persistently, left a million voice mails, and texted me when all else failed, but all of his efforts went unanswered. At the time, I needed my space: a concept of which Peter had no understanding.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered against my ear. And dammit, he sounded like he meant it.

I didn't know what to say. His fingers started tracing gentle circles around my lower back, and despite myself, it felt kind of good. Loving, almost.

"I don't know what came over me," he said. "I freaked out. You didn't deserve it."

The sincerity in his voice sounded so authentic, like he really was sorry. The combination of his apology and the soothing motions he was massaging on my back made my heart ache. Already I was on the verge of forgiving him. Peter was not the devil that Christina accused him of being. He was human, and humans make mistakes. At least he had the courage to own up to his.

My arms slid around his waist without my brain telling them to, and I melted into his embrace. It felt good to give in to him.

"Are we okay?" he asked, leaning away from me so he could look at my face.

I nodded carefully. "But not if it happens again."

"It won't," he blurted out. He brought his fingers up and lightly ran them down my cheek, to my chin. "Can I see it?"

"See what?"

"Where I hurt you."

In my head I debated whether I should show him or not. I knew what it looked like, and it wasn't pretty. But as I thought about it, I decided that he should know. He damaged me. He'd never be able to see the emotional effects of what he did, but he could at least see the physical. Maybe he needed to see the bruise so he could understand the severity of it all.

So I took his hand and led him out of the cafeteria, to a quieter hallway where nobody else was around. He stood behind my back and pulled the fabric of my collar out so he could see down my shirt.

"Shit," Peter breathed. He pulled the cloth even farther away from my body, exposing the entire bruise, I imagine.

I declined my head as he examined my shoulder. I felt ashamed. I wished that I hadn't bruised- Peter didn't shove me against the wall _that_ hard. I felt guilty for being so weak. For being fragile.

"It doesn't hurt that bad," I said, even though it did.

"It looks horrible," Peter argued. He poked it and I flinched. "It does hurt, doesn't it?"

I didn't answer.

"Babe," he said apologetically. I turned in half a circle to face him.

His arms came around me for a second time. For some reason I still paused to hug him back.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"I know you are."

"Forgive me." It wasn't a request. "I need to hear you say it."

I gnawed on my bottom lip before I obliged. "I forgive you."

He squeezed me a little tighter, and we stayed like that for a while. Then his fingers trailed up my back, under my shirt, until they found the knot that lay under the bruised skin.

"Hey," he said into my hair. "At least it's in a good hiding place." He pulled away from me with a genuinely happy smile on his face. "Nobody will ever know it's there."

His words stung in a way I didn't expect them to. He was right, and I was kind of relieved for the same reason, but the way he said it- it was selfish. As if his main concern was what the public thought, instead of what I thought. He wasn't glad about knowing that I was okay; he was glad that everyone else had no reason to think that I wasn't.

"It shouldn't be there at all," I countered, anger fueling my words.

"I know, I know," he said. "But if it had to be somewhere, you know, at least it's in a spot where your shirt covers it."

_If it had to be somewhere_.

I shook my head at him in disbelief. The forgiveness I promised Peter moments ago was quickly vanishing. "I can't believe you just said that."

He lowered his brows. "What?"

His ignorance only frustrated me more. I didn't feel like explaining something that was common sense. "Nothing," I confirmed. "I want to go finish my lunch." I knew that I wouldn't be able to, though. My appetite was non-existent.

"Okay." He kissed my forehead, and I struggled to resist wiping it off. "I'll call you tonight."

I gave him a brief nod and turned away from him as I headed back toward the cafeteria. I thought over and over again about what he said. _At least it's in a good hiding place._ Yeah, good thing, huh, Peter? Congratulations, your secret's safe for a few more weeks. Disgusting. It was the kind of attitude that made me anticipate another one of his violent episodes. Who knew when the next one would be? How bad would I get hurt that time?

I pushed the thought out of my mind. There wouldn't be a next time. I wouldn't let there be.

* * *

><p>Coach Johanna got a call in the middle of practice saying that she had to pick her sick son up from elementary school. She let us go early as well because the school forbids us from practicing without an adult's supervision. Nobody complained.<p>

I didn't bother changing out of my practice uniform. Christina stayed behind to shower again, and I was the first girl to leave the locker room. The bright traffic cones were blocking the portion of sidewalk that was still under construction, but I didn't mind. I had to cross the street anyway to get where I was going.

I decided to do this on my drive home from Peter's house on the night he attacked me after our dinner together. I made a vow to myself that Peter would never get the chance to lay his hands on me out of rage again. I was his girlfriend, not his punching bag. He needed to learn the difference. Our conversation in the hallway at school served as proof.

The window that I spied in the previous week was now shielded with horizontal blinds. I scurried a few feet past it and pulled open a light metal door. A bell chimed to announce that there was a visitor.

The inside smelled like sweat and feet. The foam mats on the floor caved beneath me as I stepped further into the room. One of the four walls was completely made up of a large mirror that stretched from the ground to the ceiling, reminding me of a ballet studio that my parents made me go to when I was three. The mirrors made my reflection look slightly wider than I actually was. I liked the thicker version of myself.

"No shoes on the mats."

I transferred my eyes to the far right corner of the room. A doorway without a door was over there, and standing in it wasn't who I was expecting.

With crossed arms, Eric leaned against the white frame. "Take 'em off or get out."

I obeyed by sliding out of my sneakers and picking them up by the heels. "Sorry."

"There something I can help you with, Spandex?" he asked, the nickname coming from the tight volleyball shorts I was wearing. I now regretted not changing out of them. My cheeks reddened with embarrassment.

"I was just wondering..." I knew I sounded timid. Eric wasn't the person I wanted to talk to about this. "Do you- or anyone else who works here- offer private lessons?"

Eric's lips quirked up to an evil smirk. His blue eyes would have been pretty were they not looking at me like I was some kind of prey. The color of them disappeared behind his eyelids as he lowered them to look at my body.

"Lessons in what?" he creepily flirted.

I suppressed an eye roll. How professional of him. "Self-defense."

His eyes wandered around the room as he considered my question. The veins in his neck stood out as he flexed his jaw.

The same bell that ringed when I came through the door sounded again. I looked over my shoulder expectantly.

I wasn't disappointed.

Four kicked his shoes off by the entrance. He was dressed in the same black uniform that I saw him and Eric wearing the other day, and the strap of a duffle bag crossed his chest. He lifted the strap over his head and tossed the bag to the side. His gaze drifted until it settled on me. If he was surprised to see me, it didn't show.

"No," said Eric, bringing my attention back to him.

I almost forgot what we were talking about. "Are you sure?" I persisted.

Four was on the other side of the room now, setting up a part of a hollow dummy that looked like a human torso. I could see him out of my peripheral vision.

"Look, Spandex," Eric said harshly. Any tone of flirtation was long gone, and I wondered if it had something to do with Four being here. "If you want to take self-defense, then sign up for one of our classes." Without waiting for a response, he stalked back through the door-less doorway and disappeared behind the wall.

Great. Now what was I going to do? Signing up for a class wasn't an option. I didn't want to be the oldest and most inexperienced student in a group of twelve-year-olds, and I couldn't risk the chance of Peter finding out if, for some reason, he were to stumble upon this place. I knew the chances of that happening were slim, but it scared me enough to talk me out of it.

I turned to leave, but before I made it half way to the exit, a strong hand grasped my elbow.

"Hold on." I knew that voice. It didn't belong to Eric.

I looked at Four over my shoulder. His face was so close to mine, I could count the whiskers of his stubble. He released my arm now that he had my attention.

"Why do you want to learn self-defense?" he asked.

His question surprised me. "Aren't you suppose to encourage people to take self-defense rather than question their reasoning?"

The left corner of his lip twitched into something resembling a smile. "I'm not _dis_couraging you, but I'd still like to know why."

It was finally happening. Four and I were having our first real conversation.

And I wasn't about to ruin it by telling him the truth.

"My family's planning a trip to New York," I lied. It was the first thing that came to my head. "My dad thought that it would be a good idea for me to learn a little self-defense. You know, in case I get mugged or something."

He stared at me with narrow eyes. For a second I thought he didn't believe me, but then he started to nod like my made-up reason was good enough.

"What's your schedule like?" he asked.

I was grateful that I had an activity worth talking about. "Volleyball from two to three-thirty on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays," I tell him. "That's about it."

"Let me see your phone." He held his hand out with his palm up, gesturing with his fingers for me to give it to him.

Unsure of where this was going, I swung my drawstring backpack around my shoulder and dug through it until I found my smartphone. I wasn't allowed to have a pass-code on it because my boyfriend was a control freak, so I handed it over to Four without unlocking it.

He pressed the home button and a picture of me and Peter lit up as the background. He chuckled and briefly glanced at me before navigating through my phone. My cheeks felt hot as I watched him.

The phone was tilted enough so I couldn't see what he was doing, but moments later Four returned it to my hands. I waited for him to explain.

"I put my address in your notes," he said. "If you're serious about private lessons, then show up tomorrow at two."

I felt like laughing. Just last week, Four had never said more than two words to me. Now I apparently had his address. For a matter strictly of business, but still... how many other girls could say that? And to make things better, he was helping me behind Eric's back. Choosing a stranger in need over someone he worked with. It made me feel special.

"Two o'clock," Four repeated. "If you're a minute late, you can forget it."

Even though he was trying to be stern, I smiled. He pursed his lips and turned to walk toward the room that Eric was probably kicking puppies in, but something stopped him along the way, and he shifted his feet to face me again.

"Don't wear those shorts tomorrow," he said. "They're... distracting."

He retreated to the back room without letting me respond. Probably a good thing, because I don't think I would have been able to structure a sentence. All I felt capable of was blushing.

I left the building, pausing outside to check the note app in my phone. There it was, the very last document entered, hovering above of a grocery list that I forgot was in there: Four's home address. Now that I saw it with my own eyes, I grinned to myself and clicked the power button to make the screen go dark.

The rest of the walk to the parking lot was a blur. As giddy as I was to have an opportunity to spend time with Four, a second thought fought its way into my head until it beat the excitement out of me.

I closed the door behind me after I filled the seat in the driver's side of my car, mentally reminding myself that Peter can never find out about this.


	4. Chapter 4

**I'M SO SORRY for taking my sweet time with this chapter. My excuses aren't interesting. But I would like to say thank you for all of the sweet reviews, those are what inspire me to keep writing, and as always, I'd love to keep hearing what you guys think! Also I can't believe that this story almost has 60 followers! I don't know if that's actually a lot, but it's a lot to me and I couldn't be happier with the feedback. But anyway, you guys have waited long enough for this so I'm gonna shut up. Here's Chapter Tobias. I mean Four. (It's okay if you laughed at that)**

I've been parked in his driveway for three minutes now. My stomach has been churning angrily, provoking me to throw up, but I didn't want to give it the satisfaction. It was dumb for me to be this nervous, and I didn't know why I was. It wasn't like I was going on a date. There was no pressure to impress anyone. I would simply be learning self-defense from a man I barely knew, who I was sinfully attracted to, our bodies close and sweaty and tense, challenging each other, muscles flexing... Okay, maybe I knew why I was nervous. But today was all about facing fears, and dammit, that's what I came here to do.

I stepped out of my car when the clock on the dash read 1:58, and slammed the door a little too hard behind me. If Four didn't know that I'd been waiting in his driveway, then he had to know I was here now. After I made it up the porch steps, I rang the doorbell and retreated a step back. A few seconds later the door swung open, and Four stood expectantly in front of me.

In replacement of a greeting, his eyes instantly skimmed over the entire length of my body, even though I was wearing an unflattering combination of a loose T-shirt and sweatpants. I wondered what it was that he found so intriguing. My body was nothing compared to the girls he's probably seen before- especially those four senior sluts who were rumored to have helped him earn his nickname. Someone with his physique should be attracted to one of equal perfection, not the curve-less stick figure that I was unfortunately born with.

We've been standing in front of each other for too long without saying something, so I decided to break the ice with a "Hi."

"Hi," he said back. Without verbally inviting me in, he turned around and walked away, leaving the door open behind him.

Okay..? I took the initiative to let myself in.

His house was familiar, just like any other house that I've been in. But something was off. Stairs in the front of the house: normal. Furniture in the living room: duh. Sliding glass door leading out to the pool deck: a luxury, but not unheard of. I looked over my surroundings, but couldn't quite put my finger on what was missing.

Four emerged from the kitchen to the left of the living room with two water bottles, one in each hand. He tossed one to me and I surprised myself by catching it.

"Thanks," I said, but I wasn't thirsty.

"You need to start drinking more of that."

I arched my eyebrows. "You don't know how much water I drink."

He stared at me with his naturally pouty expression. "That's true, but I do know that you don't drink enough of it."

"What makes you think that?"

A moment passed, and then Four crossed the living room, stopping once he was standing less than an arm's length away from me. He was so close that my senses picked up on his masculine scent: The faint smell of body wash (Old Spice?) mixed with a little bit of sweat. My salivary glands started to overproduce, and I swallowed to hide the evidence.

He brought his hand up and traced his thumb along the curve of my bottom lip. My heart hammered hard in my chest. For someone who barely knew me, he sure was comfortable with touching me. And for someone who barely knew him, I sure didn't mind it.

"Your lips are dry," he pointed out.

Were they? I ran my tongue over my lips to moisten them, not trying to be sexy about it- it's just now I was paranoid.

"You're dehydrated," he added. "Ergo, drink more water."

His hand moved back to his side, the ghost of his thumb still lingering around my chin. He turned around and walked toward a hallway on the other side of the room. "Come on," he called, his back facing me.

I caught up to him and followed him down the short hallway until we came to a door. He pushed it open with his broad shoulder- I cringed, because doing that would have killed mine- and lead us through to a different room.

A garage. Or, at least, what should have been a garage. There were no cars. No tools or work benches. Not a lawn mower in sight. I could feel the cool blow of air conditioning come from a vent in the ceiling. In the space of the garage was a studio, set up similarly to the one Four worked at across the street from our school. Every square inch of the floor was covered with red foam mats, and different sized punching bags rested in a corner, except for one, which was in the center of the room. One of the walls was made out of mirrors, though it wasn't nearly as tall as the one I saw yesterday.

Four kicked off his shoes by the door, leaving them where they landed, dropped his water bottle next to them, and stomped barefooted onto the mats. I mimicked his actions and joined him where he halted.

He rubbed his callused hands together. "Have you ever taken any kind of self-defense before?"

I shook my head no. "This is my first time."

He smirked, clearly finding some kind of amusement in what I said. Something told me that Four had a dirty mind.

"Well, let me tell you what you can look forward to." He tucked his hands into the loose pockets of his sweatpants. "It's going to be very physically demanding. You'll be expected to do everything I ask you to. No excuses. I don't care that you're young, I don't care that you're a girl, and I don't care that you have no muscle."

He was right. You would think that after playing volleyball for eight years, I would have some kind of advantage in that category. But no. I mean, I did have a _little _muscle, but it was mostly in my legs, and I was in no way strong. Toned, yes, but not powerful.

"You understand that everything I teach you will be strictly for self-defense." He tilted his chin down and peered at me through his eyelashes, giving me a look that a parent would give their child before disciplining them, as if I already did something wrong and he was waiting for me to admit it. "You only use this stuff if your safety is threatened, not to pick fights with some girl who hits on your boyfriend."

I started to laugh. But then I really thought about it. No girl has- to my knowledge- hit on Peter while we've been together. How _would_ I react if I saw someone flirting with him, or if I found out that he'd been hanging out with a girl as attractive as Four was behind my back? The thought if it probably should have angered me, but it didn't.

"I get it," I answered. "But if I catch some bitch wearing the same shoes as me, she's a goner."

It was his turn to laugh. Kind of. He smiled with his mouth closed and huffed out of his nose.

"God forbid." He raised his hands in mock terror.

I suppressed my smile from getting any bigger. At Hopewell High, Four was like a celebrity. Everyone knew who he was, everyone talked about his private life as if the stories belonged to them, but none of those people knew him on a personal level. He and I were far from close friends, but before last week I never would have guessed that Four had a sense of humor. Now I knew that he did. I knew where he worked, and I knew where he lived, and I knew that he could win in a fight against someone like Eric. While everyone else was caught up in the _idea_ of Four, I was here, spending time with, and subtly getting to know the real person.

Four went into detail about specific moves he would be teaching me. I tried to follow along but ended up getting lost in all the jargon. He seemed to notice that I wasn't grasping what he was saying anymore, so he stopped trying to explain and instead ordered me to start stretching.

The foam mat squished beneath my foot, making it hard to balance when I lifted the other and grabbed it behind my back. I pressed my heel to my hamstring and held it there for ten seconds, then switched and repeated the stretch with my other leg. Four vanished behind me, but I could still see his reflection in the wall of mirrors. He ambled mindlessly around the room as he also stretched, bending his elbow in the air and pulling it closer to his head with his free hand. The dim lighting in the room emphasized the sight of him, casting shadows in the crevices of his underarm muscles, making them look even more bulgy and impressive.

Then our eyes mistakenly met in the mirror. His impeccable talent for catching me in the middle of a trance never ceased to embarrass me. I looked away before my cheeks had the chance to change into a darker shade of pink. Pretending like nothing happened, I transitioned to a different stretch.

I sat down and extended my left leg in front of me while the right one stayed tucked, then reached for my toes. I did this every time before volleyball practice, so my fingers traveled well past the average person's limit. I joined them together around the arch of my foot, and bent my spine forward until my chest met my thigh and my chin hovered over my kneecap. My hamstring burned with a pain that I found kind of soothing. Again, after holding that pose for a while, I copied the same stretch with my right leg.

Four walked around me and stood beside me, towering above my contorted body like a skyscraper. "You're a flexible one," he said.

I smiled, taking pride in my worthless ability, happy that he noticed it.

"Hop up."

Using the words from the beginning of Four's spiel, I did as I was "expected." We stood facing each other. I was miniscule compared to him, both in height and width. His collar bone was level with my eyes, and if we were to embrace, my head would fit perfectly into the crook of his neck... _Oh my God, stop_. _Boyfriend, Tris- you have a boyfriend_.

Four thankfully interrupted my thoughts before they traveled any deeper: "We're going to start with a few simple ways to get out of a grip."

His words were like a trigger to my memory, bringing me back to the nights when Peter lost his temper. Squeezing my arms, shoving me carelessly into the closest things that could hurt me. Getting out of a grip seemed like an easy fix to my problem, so I silently cheered when he said we'd be doing that first. "Fine with me."

"Let's say I'm a kidnapper." Four grabbed my right wrist with his opposite hand, firmly, but careful not to cause any pain. "What do you do?

"Kick you in the balls," I suggested. It was the first and most obvious thing that came to mind.

"No," Four's face flushed, and he immediately covered the mentioned area of himself with his free hand. "I mean, yes, if you were really being attacked, but in this case you _better_ _not_."

I laughed a little bit. "Then what do I do, kidnapper?"

"I'll show you. Grab mine." He let go of my wrist and offered his own. I held it in the same way that he did mine, but it was so trunk-like that my fingertips didn't even touch when they were around the girth.

"Watch carefully," he instructed.

Four maneuvered his hand in somewhat of a circle until it was around my wrist. He twisted it so out of shape that it hurt to just stand there and let it happen, so I leaned forward and bent my arm to move with the motion instead of trying to resist it. With Four now taking the dominant position, I was hunched over awkwardly at his mercy. He straightened my arm out by bringing it toward him, and I felt his other hand encircle the back of my neck. I had no other option but to stare at our feet.

He brought one of his knees up slowly, pausing right before it was about to make contact with the bridge of my nose.

"That's what you do." He released me, and I stood up straight.

"Easy enough," I said with more confidence than I actually had.

Four raised his eyebrows. "Oh yeah?" His fingers curled around my wrist again, this grip being stronger than the last. "Show me what you got, grasshopper."

I rolled my eyes. What was this, _Karate Kid_?

My attempt to get out of Four's hold was less than graceful. His wrist was so big, so thick, that I couldn't push my hand to get around it. I ended up squirming in all directions, trying anything to loosen his fingers and take him down, but every effort failed miserably. If Four was a real abductor, he would have dragged me to his creepy, window-less white van by now, and I'd be featured in tomorrow's AMBER alert.

"Your hand is too big," I complained.

"My hand is normal sized," he said defensively. "You, however, are small, but you can still do this."

"I don't see how!"

"You're not taking it seriously enough." He pulled me closer to him. His puppy-dog eyes that usually looked soft were now replaced with dark brown daggers. "Get mad, Tris. I'm trying to kidnap you because I think you're weak. I think you're powerless. You're just a stupid girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you'll be dead tomorrow if you don't get away from me right now."

Is it bad that the only thing I heard during that pep-talk was my name? Only after he said it did I realize I never gave it to him. It didn't surprise me that he knew it. We've gone to school together for almost two years now, and it wasn't like either of us were- there's no other way to say it- _unpopular_. He knew my name the same way I knew his- through other people.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah.

"It's kind of hard to be that scared in such a controlled environment," I countered. "But okay. I'll try."

He nodded and started the simulation from the beginning.

* * *

><p>Two hours later, I followed him back into the house. My drenched shirt clung to my back, and I struggled to catch my breath, but Four barely even broke a sweat. He looked the same as he did when I first arrived to his house. We went through the wrist-grabbing situation at least thirty times, and I hadn't made any progress at all. Four didn't have to tell me he was disappointed; it was written all over his face.<p>

By the tenth time, I started second guessing myself, thinking that I was in way over my head about this. Peter wasn't quite as big as Four, but he was definitely stronger than me. If I couldn't beat Four, I wouldn't be able to beat Peter either. I was a hopeless cause, a natural submissive. Peter would keep abusing me. I would continue to be his helpless punching bag.

But at the end of our time together, Four lifted my spirits without even meaning to. "We'll pick this up on Thursday," he said. It was a casual phrase, something he probably didn't put much thought into, but it was enough to make me realize that even though I was ready to give up, Four wasn't quite done with me yet.

He dipped behind the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. We sat on opposite sides of the serving hatch, Four supplying two fresh water bottles straight out of the the fridge for us. He slid one across the counter to me, and I chugged half of it down with the same desperation of someone who just spent the last week crossing a desert on a donkey. Self-defense was a work out; it made me thirsty.

"Not too fast," Four warned, reaching for the end of my bottle and tilting it back down. "You'll make yourself sick."

"I don't care," I sighed, slamming the plastic container on the counter.

Four bit down on his plump bottom lip and narrowed his eyes as he studied my face. "You're upset."

I avoided looking directly at him. "Kind of. I sucked."

"Everyone has to start somewhere," he offered. "You'll get better."

"You think?" I asked, exasperated. "I mean you said so yourself: I'm small, I'm weak, I have no muscle. That doesn't sound like someone who can defend herself from a guy who's twice her size."

Four's hand twitched like he wanted to use it to comfort me, but it stayed in its place across the counter.

"You'll get better," he repeated, then took a sip of his own water.

I decided to just believe him and change the subject. "What time does Mr. Eaton usually come home?"

Four nearly choked on the water as it drained down his throat. He went into a coughing fit, and I was about to get up and perform my best version of the Heimlich, but he quickly gained his composure and cleared his throat.

"You know my father?"

"He's my math teacher," I explained. "I didn't do so well on the last test, so I thought maybe I could talk to him about it while I'm over here."

He stared at me for a long moment, then got out of his seat and turned his back toward me as he rummaged through the kitchen, looking for something that all of a sudden became important.

"Uh, my dad... doesn't live here," he said, skimming through a drawer.

"Oh," I muttered. A follow-up question popped into my head, but I wasn't sure if I should ask it. Eh, what the hell. "Are your parents divorced or something?"

Hesitation. "No," he finally answered. "I just live by myself."

"What?!" It left my mouth before I could filter it. "You're, like, eighteen! That's a little young to live by yourself, don't you think?"

He shrugged, closed the drawer he was looking through and moved onto another. "It's legal. I'm an adult."

As true as that was, it still seemed crazy to me. Four was only a senior in high school. How was anyone his age mentally or financially ready to move out from their parents' house and live on their own?

"You should probably get going." He stopped what he was doing long enough to glance at me.

Oh?

"I got a girl coming over," he added.

_Oh. _Of course he did. Teaching a stranger self-defense lessons couldn't possibly be the highlight of his day. Still, it was like a slap in the face. My heart ached with scandalous jealousy.

"Sure," I said with a smile that was as weak as my arms.

"I'll walk you out."

I was in the lead this time as we walked to the front door. I looked around one last time, still hooked on trying to find what was different about this house compared to a regular home, aside from his parents not living here. We made it to the front door before I could figure it out.

I stepped out on the porch and Four stayed between the door frame. I turned on my heels to look at him, wondering how I should say good-bye, and that's when it hit me. In my house, the first thing you saw when you walked through the front door was a framed family portrait hung over the mantle in the living room. Smaller photos were splattered around the family portrait: some of me, some of my parents, and some of my brother, Caleb. Most of the rooms in our house were decorated similarly, with captured memories taking up just the right amount of room on the walls, and desks, and tabletops.

That's what Four's house was lacking. Pictures.

"I'll see you Thursday, grasshopper," Four teased again with that nickname that sounded odd when it wasn't used in a Japanese accent, leaning with his arm against one side of the door frame.

I peaked over his shoulder to confirm my suspicion. From what I could see, there were no pictures. No family portraits, or happy couples, or smiling babies with missing teeth. No wedding photos, no pee-wee football or yearbook pictures. Just a bunch of empty walls.

"See you on Thursday," I agreed, and reluctantly turned away from him to head back to my car. I heard the front door close once I made it down the steps.

Now my heart ached with more than jealousy.

Maybe it wasn't that weird that a teenage boy didn't have any pictures placed around his house. Four didn't come off as sentimental, or as the type that cared much about interior decoration. But the fact that it was his own house- that's what didn't make sense to me. Mr. Eaton was a common favorite at Hopewell High. He was nice, funny, sympathetic, great at his job. An all around good guy. Why wouldn't Four want to live with him? Was he that fiercely independent that he needed to move out the moment he turned eighteen? Even so, I doubted that he made enough at the studio to afford living in a house as nice as his. He must have been getting some kind of financial help from someone, but who? His parents? Not sure why they would pay for that.

My head hurt from trying to put all of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. Four's life was complicated, but at the moment, so was mine, and I only had enough energy to deal with one of them.

Maybe figuring Four out would go the same way he promised my training would. I'd get better at it over time.

**Hey I have a question! I know that Uriah hasn't made an appearance in my story yet, but did anyone else pronounce his name wrong when they read the books? I just recently found out that I've been saying it wrong the whole time (like Er-e-uh) and my friend said that she had it wrong too... So I'm wondering, are we just illiterate fucks or is it a common thing?**


	5. Chapter 5: Part I

**Okay, so a little heads up: this chapter's a lot shorter than the others, but that's because I decided to break it up into two parts. This was a complete last minute decision. I just started writing this chapter tonight because I wanted to do something in the spirit of Halloween, but if I balled everything into one post, it would have been super long and I didn't want anyone getting bored, so I figured two parts would be better than one jumbo chapter. Plus splitting it up means I get to update sooner for you lovely doves! I hope this tactic is okay with everyone. And if it's not, you can suck my ass.**

"Whatever you're doing this weekend, drop it, because we're going out!" Christina shouted from down the hallway, waving her arms in the air like she just won a prize. The other students standing around the lockers dropped their conversations and turned their heads to give Christina judgmental looks for being so loud. "_What_?" she growled at one of them, flexing her shoulders back and nodding her head aggressively in their direction. Christina was a shorty, smaller than me, but she didn't let that stop her from being tough as nails. It was something I admired about her.

I laughed as she approached my locker. "Be a little louder, why don't you?"

She locked her hands around my shoulders and shook me playfully back and forth. "WE'RE. GOING. OUT. THIS. WEEKEND!"

"OKAY," I said, mocking the tone she was using. "Where?"

Christina dug into her back pocket and lifted out a crinkled piece of paper. She handed it over to me and I expanded the folds, now looking at a combination of numbers and words that I didn't recognize.

I glanced at her. "What is this?"

"Uriah Pedrad's home address," she answered proudly.

And she had every reason to be proud. Uriah and his brother, Zeke, were party legends. They threw one almost every weekend, but their address was hard to come by if you didn't know them personally. And if you weren't invited, they made damn sure that you didn't step a single foot in their house. The affairs themselves were very exclusive, but they and their guests were never shy about bragging to those less-worthy about what happened at them on the Mondays that followed. Christina and I (mostly Christina) did everything in our power to get invited to one as freshmen, but our efforts went sadly unnoticed every time, so eventually we gave up. Until now, I guess.

"You got... How the... When did you-" My brain was too in shock to function.

Christina giggled at my speech impediment and took a deep breath to give the story about what happened. "He came into my last class to make up a test, and the only empty desk in the room was the one next to me, so Ms. Clark told him to sit there, and when he did he just, like, stared at me for the longest time, and he asked me what my name was, so I told him, and then he asked what I was doing this weekend, and I told him that I wasn't sure yet, and then he said that I should come to his Halloween party-" she inhaled another long breath- "So I pretended to consider it, and I asked him if I could bring a friend, and he asked me who, and I told him you, and I guess he knew who you were because he was all 'Yeah that's cool,' so I said we'd be there, and then he gave me this-" she stole the piece of paper back and snapped it between her fingers. "His address, baby." She lifted the hems of an imaginary skirt and curtsied. "You're welcome."

I applauded slowly and bowed sarcastically before her. "You are amazing."

"Right?" she said with a wink. "But anyway, I'm not even going to ask if you can come, because you're definitely _going_, even if I have to chloroform you and drag your unconscious ass."

I laughed again, but Christina shot me a look that told me she was serious.

"I'll have to ask Pete-"

Christina tossed her head back and rudely groaned like a dying animal. I smacked her shoulder.

"I can't just go without him." I crossed my arms.

"Why not?" She crossed her arms too. "He's such a party-pooper, Tris. He wouldn't even have fun."

She had a point. I tried bringing Peter to a party with me and Christina before, but it didn't go as well as I'd hoped it would. He wouldn't drink, wouldn't dance, wouldn't talk to anyone besides me. He made us leave after only an hour of being there.

I defended him anyway. "It's not about whether he'll have fun or not, it's just a relationship courtesy."

Christina scoffed. She didn't understand because the last relationship- if you can even call it that- that she was part of, was in middle school, for two-_and-a-half_ weeks with a boy named Edward. The kid ended up making out with some other girl while they were "together," and when Christina found out, she literally punched Edward in the face and declared that she was done with boys for the rest of her life. So far she hasn't gone back on her word.

"Whatever," she sighed. "Ask your stupid boyfriend if you have to."

I felt a sassy eye roll coming on, but before I could perform it, something on the other side of the hall caught my attention. Or someone, I should say. Two people actually. One being Four and the other being a pretty girl with dark hair and tanned skin. Nita, I think was her name. They stood close to each other as they strolled down the hall, Nita laughing hard at something that Four said. He smiled down at her, but his expression was dull compared to her outrageous cackle. Whatever he said probably wasn't as funny as Nita made it out to be. Classic flirtatious girl move: _Laugh at all of his jokes as if he's the funniest guy in the world._ I resumed my eye roll.

Four caught my gaze as he and his girl passed by me and Christina. I would have been friendlier toward him if it was just us two, but saying anything to him right now with Christina and Nita in earshot seemed dangerous. Not that Christina would disapprove; she was already basically shipping us ever since our stare-off in the hallway on the first day that Four noticed me. Still, I wasn't ready for her to know that I had any kind of ties to him. She wasn't the best secret keeper, and I didn't want to face another outburst from Peter.

But with my shit luck, of course Four feels the need to acknowledge me. He whispers something to Nita and she nods, flashing me a look that I couldn't quite read. She waited a few feet away while Four crossed the floor to approach me.

Christina saw him before I had the chance to say anything. "Oh hey, Four."

"Hey," he said to her softly, his voice deep, and raspier than normal.

I pursed my lips together and looked up at him, not really sure what do to next in this situation. My stomach was floating with nervous butterflies, and not the good kind.

He cleared his throat. "Tris, about tomorrow-"

"Our tutor session?" I blurted out lamely. It probably wasn't the best cover, but explaining to Christina that I was doing poorly in a class sounded easier than explaining to her why I was taking self-defense. Four furrowed his brows in confusion. I glanced at Christina, then back at him, and subtly shook my head.

"Since when have you ever needed a tutor, Miss Honor Roll?" she asked suspiciously.

I shrugged. "I didn't do very good on the last math test." That, at least, was true.

"Yeah," Four chimed in. "And my dad's been shoving math down my throat since I was a kid, so I'm kind of her best option." He smirked cockily, catching my eyes with his.

Relief flooded over me when I realized he was going along with it.

"Anyway, I just wanted to say that I can't do tomorrow," he said. "Something came up."

"Oh," I said, a little disappointed. "That's okay."

"Sorry." He patted my bad shoulder, the one with the bruise that he had no idea about, with one of his man-paws, and it took everything in me keep my composure. "We'll start back up on Tuesday."

"Sounds good," I said through gritted teeth.

Four returned to Nita, leaving me alone with a very bewildered Christina.

"You've been getting tutored by Four?" she questioned.

"Only once."

"Does Peter know?"

"No."

As if on cue, Peter came from around a corner not too far from where we were standing. I looked at Christina with eyes that begged, and she nodded, silently agreeing to drop the subject for now.

"Hey, beautiful," Peter whispered, sounding surprisingly sincere, and planted a quick kiss on my forehead. Then his eyes shifted to my friend and his mood instantly flattened out. "Christina."

"Peter," she mumbled.

"Peter!" I repeated, purposely sounding more up-beat. "Wanna go to a Halloween party?"

Christina opened her mouth to say something, but stopped herself before anything came out. I think she wanted to mention that Uriah only invited me and her.

"Whose?" he asked.

Wow, not an automatic 'no.' Was he actually considering it?

"Uriah and Zeke's," Christina butted in.

He shot her a dirty glare and looked back to me. "Do you want to go?"

I bit down on the corner of my bottom lip and diverted my eyes around shyly, something I knew Peter was a sucker for. "Kind of."

He waited a long second, then tilted his head down and blew air out between his closed lips, like a horse. "I guess."

I smiled, feeling genuinely happy around Peter for the first time in a while. He didn't argue or cause a scene like I expected him to. He was acting selflessly, doing this for me because he knew it was what I wanted. Something was finally easy with him. I peaked over at Christina, who also had a grin on her face.

"When is it?" Peter asked. He didn't sound excited.

"Friday," Christina answered happily. "I guess I'll go tell Uriah about your plus one."

I nodded, thinking that was probably a good idea.

She started walking away with a skip in her step, but paused abruptly halfway down the hall.

"Oh, I almost forgot!" She exclaimed, turning around to momentarily face us again. "Uriah says costumes are mandatory."

* * *

><p>I cringed when I saw the article of clothing Christina pulled out of from the depths of her dresser. She held it up by the two skimpy straps to give me a better look at it, and raised her eyebrows with hope.<p>

"There's no way I'm wearing that." I shook my head. "Lingerie is not a costume."

"Prude," she muttered.

"Says the virgin," I countered.

"To the other virgin," she shot back. We both started laughing.

She turned to face the long mirror in the corner of her room and held the lingerie up to her body to see how it might look on her. "I can't believe you're still a virgin," she said without taking her eyes off of her reflection.

I threw my feet off of her bed and leaned forward to rest my elbows on my knees.

"Like, you're in a stable, committed relationship and you're still not having sex," she went on.

"You sound like Peter," I replied dryly.

"Aren't you curious at all?"

I sighed, quietly enough so Christina couldn't hear me. Of course I was curious. I was a hormonal teenage girl. I had... _urges_, just like anyone else my age. Before Peter's anger management started becoming a problem, there had been a couple of steamy moments between us when I thought it might happen. But every time we got to the part of removing clothes, I grew terrifyingly insecure and always ended up chickening out. Peter's accused me of teasing him multiple times, as if I was torturing him on purpose, but I swear my intentions were never that selfish. Intimacy was something that paralyzed me with fear, the same way that some people were afraid of heights and others were afraid of the dark. Fears didn't always make sense, but they were nearly impossible to overcome.

"I think I'll just wear it," Christina said, changing the subject back to the lingerie.

"What exactly are you going as?"

Off of her dresser, she picked up a black headband. Fluffy cat ears were sewn to the top of it.

"Original," I joked.

She shrugged. "At least I _have_ a costume."

I narrowed my eyes at her. Christina and I spent all day yesterday shopping for costumes with the little time we had left before the party, which was tonight. We both struck out, because most of the good ones were already snatched up by now, and the rest of them were ugly or just too damn expensive. So as a last resort, we went back to Christina's house to see what we could pull together from previous years' costumes and clothes we already had. I was striking out for a second time.

A gentle knock sounded on Christina's door, and a second later her mom, Stephanie, poked her head in the room.

"How are the costumes coming along?" she asked excitedly. "Wait, is that mine?"

Christina hid the short underwear-dress behind her back, her cheeks burning with a unique shade of red. "No, Mom, don't be silly."

Stephanie shook her head. "What about you, Tris?"

I fell back on Christina's mattress, tossing my hands dramatically in the air and letting them fall by my head. "I got nothing."

The door creaked open a little wider, and Christina's mom leaned against the door frame. She had a rough look on her face, one that proved she was thinking hard about something.

"What size are you?" she finally said.

I sat up. "Small. Or 1, if you're talking about pants."

Stephanie laughed a little and shook her finger at me. "I might have something for you." And with no further detail, she disappeared from the room. Christina and I looked at one another, both of us wondering what she meant.

A few minutes later her mom returned, this time carrying a big white bag with the hook of a clothes hanger peaking out from the top. She lay the bag flat on the bed beside me, and we all huddled around it.

"Don't ask me where I got this, because I couldn't remember if I wanted to," Stephanie said, flattening the bag against the bed.

I exchanged another look with Christina. Stephanie looped her manicured finger nail through the zipper at the top of the bag, and slowly tugged it down the middle. When the zipper reached the end of the track, she tossed the flaps of the bag to the sides, then leaned back, exposing what was hidden beneath it.

"_Whoa_," Christina and I breathed in unison.

**What are you guys being for Halloween this year?**

**P.S. ANOTHER IDEA I JUST HAD: Would you guys be interested in seeing a collage of the things that make up Tris's and Christina's finished costumes in the next part, or would you rather leave that to your imagination? I'll obvious describe what they look in the post, but I saw someone else make collages for their character's outfits and I just thought it was a neat little idea!**


	6. Chapter 5: Part II

**Lol well this was suppose to be part of a chapter but it ended up being longer than any other thing that I've ever posted. I'm submitting it tonight because I'm visiting my friend at college this weekend and I wouldn't have an opportunity to post it otherwise. Have a great Halloween everyone, I hope yours goes better than Tris's!**

I was the designated driver that night because Christina had her heart set on getting drunk. I didn't put up much a fight since binge drinking wasn't really my thing. We pulled up to the house with the corresponding address on the paper around 10 o'clock, but so many cars were already there that we had to drive past it and park down the road. I felt vulnerable as Chris and I walked in the pitch black: just two girls barely wearing anything on a night that was made to be especially creepy. The neighborhood was decorated with cob webs and jack-o-lanterns, ghouls and ghosts, zombies and fake blood- anything Halloween-like that you could thing of. I started shivering when we passed an old wooden house that didn't need any special treatment to look scary.

Christina came to a halt all of a sudden, when Uriah and Zeke's house was only a couple of yards away, and I trudged along a little farther before I realized she had stopped. I turned from the torso to look at her, a panicked expression on her face.

"What?" I asked.

"You forgot your mask in the car!" She covered her mouth with her hands as if it was the end of the world.

I touched the skin around my eyes where the covering was suppose to be, realizing with annoyance that she was right. I sighed and paced the few steps back to her, pulling my keys out of the clutch purse I was carrying.

"Just give them to me." She held out her hand. "I'll go get it. There's no sense in us both walking back."

"But-" I began to protest. The thought of being left alone on a night like this gave me chills.

She flicked her eyebrows up at me. "But what? Are you _scared_?"

"No," I said loudly. "Never mind. Just hurry up." I dropped the keys into her open palm.

She turned on her black high-heels and raced down the sidewalk, turning a corner and disappearing from my sight.

I crossed my arms, feeling how alone I was. I felt like a target while I stood by myself in the open night air. I had to keep telling myself there were people only a few yards away. That there was nothing creepier about tonight than there was any other night. After a few repetitions, my frantic breaths started coming in slower, and my anxiety leveled down.

That's when someone leaped out of the bushes to my right, hollering a blood-curdling scream with their arms hung in the air. I immediately thought I was about to die when I saw the face of a demonic clown charging right at me. I let out a yell that was so different from my voice that I didn't even recognize it as my own, and I would have run away if my legs weren't frozen in place.

Christina crawled from around the corner she turned just moments ago, holding her stomach in a fit of laughter. A lower-pitched chuckle from the person behind the clown mask chimed in as well, and all I could do was look back and forth between the team that just scared the hell out of me, wondering when they took the time to plan this out.

"That was so good!" Christina cried, bounding toward us, still hunched over from laughing so hard.

Like a scene from Scooby-Doo, she lifted the mask off of the head of the person who scared me, revealing a grinning Uriah. My hand felt for the rapid heartbeat in my chest, urging it to calm down.

I slapped them both on their shoulders, feeling myself relax enough until I was comfortable enough to laugh at myself with them. "I hate you both so much." I didn't know Uriah well enough to hate him, but in that moment, I did.

Christina wrapped me in a hug, pinning my arms down by my sides. She had a contagious laugh, so it was hard to stay mad at her.

"You love me," she said, and I rolled my eyes with a small smile. "This is Uriah, by the way."

Uriah extended his hand for me to shake it. Under Christina's embrace, I couldn't move the top part of my arms, so I bent my elbow by my hip and he brought his hand to mine.

"Tris," I told him.

"You know, Tris, you look so good that I almost couldn't do it." He brought his lips down to my knuckles and kissed them lightly, dragging his eyes along my body as he did it.

I looked down at the smoke colored corset dress that I was wearing, sure that my cheeks were blushing from his comment. The corset part of the dress made me look curvier than usual, the tights mixed with the black heels made my pale legs look long and dark. My hair was done up in an elegant bun, and the only thing left to complete the Black Swan look was being gripped under Christina's fist.

She saw me eyeing the mask and loosened her arms until they weren't around me anymore, then stepped behind my back and helped me put it on. She lowered it over my eyes and I adjusted it until I could see through the holes between the black lace as she tied the strings behind my head. She turned me around and held me at arms length to get a good look at her handy work.

"God, you look awesome," she whispered. "Just wait 'til Peter sees you."

While I was getting ready at Christina's house, Peter called to let me know that he would be running late, and that he would meet as at the party when he was ready to. He didn't give me a reason, so I knew he was just using it as an excuse to procrastinate, but it was fine with me. I was kind of looking forward to a couple of hours without him.

"Well I'm gonna scare a few more people," Uriah said, covering his face with the ugly clown mask again. His next words came out muffled: "But you guys can head on in."

Christina latched herself around my arm and dragged us to the front door. The music sounded soft outside of the house, but as soon as the door opened, the volume of the music combined with voices trying to talk over it escalated and I could feel vibration in my feet and chest every time a heavy beat pulsed. Christina pulled us through the house, shouting funny things to people she knew, and she cheering like a maniac when we passed by someone doing a keg-stand.

I didn't know where they came from, but Will and Al magically appeared by our sides, Al holding two open beers in his hands and Will sipping out of a red plastic cup. Will was dressed like an adorable nerd, suspenders and all, and Al had himself squeezed into a Shrek costume. I laughed at the accuracy of the outfits.

"Is that you, Tris?" Al yelled over the music, but I could still barely hear him. "You look... wow."

I ducked my head shyly, though I happy with his reaction. He smiled down at me and raised one of his beers to see if I wanted it, but I shook my head and told him that I had to drive.

Will dipped his head next to Christina's and I watched as he put his lips against one of her fluffy cat ears and spoke into it. Christina laughed and pushed him away, but Will pulled himself back to her and whispered something against her real ear this time. My heart melted a little bit whenever I saw them flirt so innocently, and I smiled to myself, thinking that the cat and the nerd would make such a perfect couple if they would just admit to each other how they felt.

Christina nodded at something Will said, and he nodded back, then turned and left to go somewhere else. Christina looked at me and rocked her hand back and forth with her thumb and pinky out to suggest that Will went to go get her a drink.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the front door open, and in stepped Uriah without the clown mask. A bunch of people cheered when he entered, and he fist pumped as he strolled around the room, then climbed up on a flimsy coffee table in the middle of the living room and started dancing to the deafening music. Everyone burst into laughter and cheered him on, and Uriah fed off of the energy of the crowd, throwing his hands up and closing his eyes as he continued to dance his ridiculous moves. He went to step back but half of his foot went over the edge of the table, and by the time he felt it happen, he was already toppling backwards, landing roughly on the floor.

The excess noise briefly stopped, and even with the music still playing, the room was noticeably quieter. We all froze in our places, shocked by what just happened, waiting for one of the other bystanders to know what to do. But we all relaxed a moment later, when Uriah stood up on his own and waved his hands in the air.

"I'm okay!" he said, which lead to another eruption of cheers, and everyone quickly went back to enjoying the party.

Uriah was stopped by a few people as he made his way over to us, but he eventually stood behind Christina and patted her nonchalantly on the butt.

"I thought you were outside scaring innocent children," I teased.

"Zeke took over," he explained.

Al and I exchanged a look when we saw Uriah slither one of his arms around Christina's waist.

"Be my beer pong partner?" he asked her.

Christina looked pleased to hear him say that, and she nodded her head excitedly. Uriah took her hand in his and lead her away.

Just as Christina and Uriah left our little circle, Will returned with the drink he fetched her. He noticed that Christina was gone, then looked to Al and I for answers.

"Where the hell did she go?"

Al nodded toward the ping-pong table on the other side of the room where Christina and Uriah now stood. Will's face instantly dropped, and I imagined the sound of his heart shattering like glass. He clenched his jaw, nodding to himself like he knew something like that would happen, then he looked back to me and Al, toasted Christina's drink to us, and chugged the whole thing down.

Over Will's shoulder I caught a glimpse of something bright and red, draped around a familiar broad figure. When I looked closer, I could make out Four's hooked nose and scruffy jawline. He was surrounded by a group of seniors, the only one I recognized out of them being Eric. Four had a blue beer bottle in his fist and was wearing a robe that was tied in the front, royally red with slivers of black silk around the edges. It looked completely out of character on him. In fact, him being at a party looked completely out of character. He looked and acted more mature than he actually was, so it was sometimes hard for me to remember that he was still his high school.

Will and Al were in deep conversation about something, probably Christina, so I snuck away from them without being noticed and stalked across the floor in Four's direction. His eyes passed over me as he mindlessly skimmed them around the room, then he realized who I was and returned them to me with his full attention. His lips parted slightly before he pressed them together again and swallowed.

"Tris?" He asked, and I decided I liked how my name sounded in his voice.

His friends shot me looks as they continued the conversations amongst themselves, especially Eric, who looked the angry. I wondered if he found out about the secret arrangement Four and I had.

I brushed my fingertips lightly against Four's arm, but the sleeve of his robe was so thick that I doubt he felt it. "Can we talk?"

"What?" He tilted his head down and turned so his ear was closer to me.

"I asked if we could talk," I said a little louder. Stupid music.

He shook his head. "I can't hear a damn thing you're saying," he said, then gently cupped his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me away with him. His hand drifted from my neck to the small of my back as he lead us toward a sliding glass door that opened up to a porch in the back of the house.

When we were both outside, he slid the door closed behind him. My eardrums were still throbbing from the music, but everything else was quite, and I felt surprisingly comfortable being out here with only Four.

He walked out more until he could lean against the wooden railing that outline the porch. I followed him to the railing, then turned my back to it and pulled myself up so I could sit on it. I forgot for a second that I was wearing an extremely short dress, but when I sat, the flares at the end covered everything it needed to, so I thought nothing else of it. Four was staring at me, at my newly enhanced curves, until he caught himself doing so and peeled his eyes away.

"What did you want to talk about?" He asked, now looking at the beer bottle in his hands.

I almost answered him, but then I thought back to what he told me inside. "I thought you said you couldn't hear me."

The corners of his lips expanded into a simper. I found myself doing the same thing.

"What's up with you canceling on me?" I said.

"What's up with you keeping secrets from your friend?" He flashed those big brown puppy eyes up at me.

"You answer first."

He looked out past the porch, at a dark blue lake filled with the stars' and moon's reflections.

"I had family things to deal with," he said.

I wanted to pry more, wanted to ask him what happened, and maybe even try to help him if it was serious, but I decided not to because I didn't want him to do that to me when I had to answer his question.

"Christina doesn't know about my trip to New York," I lied. Kinda. She really didn't know about it because it didn't exist. "We're going during the week of her birthday, and I haven't figured out how to tell her yet."

He nodded, believing every untrue thing I said. We stayed silent for a minute, he enjoying the view of the lake, and me simply enjoying his presence. I looked through the sliding glass door, at everyone inside getting drunk and stupid, thankful that right now I wasn't a part of the party. I caught sight of Nita standing around the friends that Four was previously with, tripping over her own two feet and relying on other people to maintain her balance. She was dressed in a white leotard with a round fluffy tail sticking out the back, and bunny ears coming out of headband in her hair. As soon I saw her, I understood Four's costume.

"Are you suppose to be Hugh Hefner?" I asked with a laugh.

He beamed up at me, switched his beer to one hand and pulled a tobacco pipe out of his robe pocket with his other. "Hey, you got it."

I laughed again and rolled my eyes. "I think your bunny's a little drunk."

He glanced over his shoulder to look at Nita inside. She was holding onto Eric now, and he had his arm around her, giving her the same devilish look that he gave me when I went to the studio to ask about private lessons.

"A little," he repeated.

I wanted to know if they were serious, but I couldn't just come out and ask it without sounding jealous. "You guys are cute together," I decided on. That sounded pretty good.

"We aren't dating," he said quickly, as if the idea repulsed him. "God no, we are not dating."

I liked his response a lot.

"Does your boyfriend know?" he asked out of the blue.

I assumed he was talking about the self-defense lessons again, but I didn't have an excuse ready for this one.

"No," I said, and then, "but it's not because I'm keeping it from him. I just haven't really told anyone about it, you know, because we just started-"

"You don't have to explain yourself to me," he interrupted. "I just wanted to know." He smirked at me. "In case I have to cover for you again."

I smiled at that. A breeze started picking up, slapping my poor bare arms with the cool October air. I crossed them over my chest and hunched over until my elbows were on my thighs, trying to make myself smaller and more compact. Four noticed right away.

"Cold?" He asked.

I nodded, instantaneously shivering.

He laughed. "I'd give you my robe," he said, "but I'm not wearing anything underneath it."

I trembled even harder, but it had nothing to do with the temperature.

"Get inside," he ordered, offering me his hand to help me down from the railing. I took it and slid off, holding onto to his rough fingers for an inappropriate moment longer before letting them go and following him inside.

It all hit me again: the loud music, the obnoxious chatter amongst the intoxicated teenagers, the couples (or strangers, who knew?) making out in every hallway and corner of the house. It reminded me why I wasn't a huge fan of parties. People were gross.

Four's hand found the lower part of my back again and I looked up to dark brown eyes that were already looking at me. He pressed his lips against my ear since we could no longer talk in our normal voices without not being heard.

"Be safe tonight, all right?" His lips tickled my ear as they brushed against it.

I nodded and poked him in the chest to say _you too_. When he pulled his hand off of me, my back felt colder now than it did outside. I knew that it was time for us to part ways, but before Four turned away from me completely, he came back, leaning his head in once more. His breath felt hot against my neck.

The loud music forbade me from clearly hearing what Four said next, but it sure sounded a whole lot like, "You look good, Tris."

A smile crept across my face, and Four's eyes lingered on mine as he really walked away this time. Four didn't have to bring me inside to make me feel warm; all he had to do was say things like that.

Christina was still playing beer pong, and I didn't see anyone else I knew, so I started making my way over to her. As I crossed the living room, though, I saw Will and Al sitting on a couch, talking it up with two girls that I've seen around school, and next to them was... Oh no.

Peter.

And he was staring right at me.

How long had he been looking at me? Did he see me with Four? Oh God, what if he saw me with Four?

Avoiding him would make me look guiltier than if I confronted him, so I changed course and let my legs carry me to my boyfriend. His expression was hard to read: not angry, but not happy. He pulled me into his lap when I reached him, the tip of his vampire cape scraping against my cheek.

"Hey, babe," he said, sounding like his normal self.

No yelling. No tension. No hitting. I took a deep, relieved breath. Maybe I was in the clear.

Peter and I went through the rest of the party like any other couple would. We mingled, and played beer pong (he drank for me whenever the other team made a cup), and by the time he wanted to leave, I forgot all about how he may or may not have seen me with Four.

Uriah insisted that he would drive Christina home, and after he passed all of my sobriety tests, I reluctantly agreed to let her stay. Peter obviously drove separately to the party, but he consumed too much alcohol to drive safely, so I told him that I would take him home and we could pick his car up tomorrow. My feet started to hurt during the walk to my car, undoubtedly from wearing heels all night, so I took the shoes off and carried them the rest of the way. Peter laced his fingers through mine when we got to the car and tugged on my hand to stop me.

I looked back at him, at his hand around mine, confused about what he was doing. He dug his fingers into my hip with his free hand and pulled my body closer to his. Our lips crashed together awkwardly, almost missing completely, but I quickly regained my balance and started to kiss him like he wanted me too.

He was the first to pull away. "You love me, right?"

I looked into his hazel eyes and nodded. "Of course."

He pursed his lips and looked away. The eyes that I was just looking into grew dark, and he turned them up toward the sky. I bit down on my bottom lip, not sure what it was that I said wrong.

In a flash, his elbow was pulled behind his head, his hand clenched into a tight fist that turned his knuckles white. In another flash, his fist was springing forward, counting down the inches until- BAM!

I fell to the ground, covering my face with my hands, not able to stop the sobs and the throbbing pain I felt directly under my right eye. The asphalt was cold against my face, but not cold enough, because I wasn't numb. I felt everything. Physical pain, emotional pain, betrayal and most of all hatred. He hit me. Peter hurt me again, no on accident or out of rage. He was as calm as the ocean after and storm, and I right now I hated every fiber of his being.

His hand wrapped around my wrist and yanked me up until I was on my feet. Tears were still streaming down my face, though I didn't feel like I was crying. I wasn't. I was too angry to cry.

Peter got right up in my face, and whispered tyrannically, "I told you not to talk to Four."

So he did see. He saw, and for the whole time we were together, he pretended like he didn't. He put on a happy face and let me believe that everything was okay, when the whole time he was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to put me in my place. He was manipulative. He was smart in the most evil kind of way.

He let me go and I hastily walked around the car to the driver's side. Peter was already in the passenger's seat when I sat down and closed the door to seal us into the confined space together. Claustrophobia has never been a problem with me before, but now the fear consumed me, and all I wanted to do was get out of the car.

"Drive," Peter demanded, staring blankly ahead through the windshield.

I wiped my face with the bare heel of my hand, took a deep breath, and started the engine.

**Anyone else wanna kill Peter?**

**I'm so annoyed because this website won't let me share a link for another website. If you want to see Tris's or Christina's costumes, shoot me a private message and I'll try to send it to you through that! Sorry for the inconvenience :(**


	7. Chapter 6

**Over 100 followers! It makes me so happy that other people like reading this story as much as I like writing it. You all are my inspiration. I wanted to introduce you guys to Tris's mom in this chapter. I also included a little of Four's perspective because it was so requested. Always feel free to pitch in ideas for the story! You know I like to please you ;)**

Another heavy sigh escaped my throat when I took a final glance in the mirror. The skin under my eye was no longer puffy, but the concealer I put over it did very little to mask the mixture of black and blue. I was out of options. No amount of makeup in the world could disguise my newest bruise.

Knuckles knocked softly against my closed bedroom door. My mom. Crap. I didn't feel prepared to face her. Last night I managed to sneak into my room while she and my father slept, so neither of my parents have had the chance to see the damage that Peter caused to my face. The knife in my stomach turned at the thought of Peter's name.

"Sweetheart?" My mom's voice was as gentle as the rest of her.

I quickly swiped my forearm down my dresser, toppling over all of the tubes of cosmetics and piling them into a makeup bag, while telling my mom that it was okay to come in.

She cracked the door open and peaked her head in. Despite the wrinkles that her age has given her, I've always thought that my mom was unconventionally pretty. I wished I looked as much like her as my brother did, but most people tend to tell me that I resemble my dad.

"Do you want to come with me to-" She stops herself when her eyes finally lock with the new addition to my face.

The worry in her expression was unbearable, so I avoided it by looking down at the floor.

"Did something... Are you..." She struggled to find the right question before settling on, "What happened?"

I spent hours laying in bed after I came home last night, so I had more than enough time to think of a believable excuse.

"It's not a big deal," I told her. "Some drunk idiot accidentally elbowed me at the party."

A lump formed in my throat, but I swallowed it back down. Lying to my mom never came easy to me. At least the part about the "drunk idiot" was true.

My mom crossed the room until her palms were cradling my cheeks. She ran her thumb lightly over the bruise, so lightly that I only knew she did it because I was looking right at her. For some reason, tears began to heat in the back of my eyes, but I held them back. I desperately wanted to confess the real story behind the bruise, to spill the details of the horrendous week that Peter was at fault for, to let my mom save me from the bad things of the world like she used to when I was a kid, but I stayed quiet and let her examine the physical damage below my eye that I had no choice but to display.

"Does it hurt?" My mom asked.

Just as I was about to say no, she poked it with her fingernail, shooting a wave of pain through the sensitive area and making me cringe. "Only when you do that!"

"Sorry, sorry," she whispered. "Do you want some ice? Or Advil?"

I declined her offer by shaking my head. I've never really been one to treat an injury so minor; I just wanted to let nature take its course.

"You were saying something earlier," I said, trying to direct the attention away from my face. "You asked if I wanted to go somewhere."

"Yeah," my mom answered slowly, not peeling her eyes away from the mark. "Do you want to come to the mall with me? I have to get your father a birthday present, and afterward I thought we could stop somewhere for lunch."

The selfish side of me wanted to stay home so I wouldn't have to flaunt the black and blue blemish under my eye and risk the chance of running into someone I know. But my dad's birthday was coming up faster than I thought, and I really did need to buy him a gift while I had the free time.

"Sure. I'll get dressed," I answered with a small smile. My mom returned with a simper of her own before strolling out of the room.

* * *

><p>"What about this?" My mom asked as she held up a silky gray tie.<p>

"Since when does Dad ever wear a tie?" I laughed.

"I don't know, but I'm running out of options!" My mom threw the tie back on the table that was covered with hundreds of other ties.

We've already spent a good two hours at the mall, weaving in and out of stores, leaving with empty hands every time. I must have gotten my shopping skills from my mother, given that I was just repeating the same failed process two days ago with Christina when we were trying to find costumes. The mall has changed drastically over the past forty-eight hours. The Halloween decorations have been taken down and now it looked like Christmas puked all over the place. People's eagerness for Christmas bugged me every year because everyone seemed to forget about Thanksgiving, which happens to be my favorite holiday.

My stomach growled again like it had been for the last thirty minutes.

"Can we take a break and get some food?" I begged.

My mom's stomach made a noise of its own right after I asked the question. We both laughed and agreed to head to the food court.

The place grew louder when we stepped outside of Macy's and into the enormous crowd of people who were also doing their Saturday shopping. Everyone in front of us seemed to walk annoyingly slow, except for a group of tween girls who rudely pushed past us because we were in the way of their mission to Starbucks. For some reason I had the urge to reach out and grab one of the girls by her straight blond ponytail. I wanted to yell in her face, embarrass her in front of the never ending wave of people, and make sure that she knew that she pissed someone off today. As soon as I had the thought, I scolded myself for it. When did I become so violent?

"Hey, that kid's wearing a Hopewell High sweatshirt." My mom nudged me in the elbow with her own. "Do you know him?"

My heart immediately dropped when I spotted Four and- Nita, of course- between the heads of anonymous shoppers. Four was wearing a black pull-over hoodie with 'Hopewell High' stitched across the front, along with equally dark jeans, and Nita was clinging to his arm in short-shorts and UGG boots, which for some unknown reason caused a flame to spark in the pits of my stomach. I was so in shock to see them- well, him- that I didn't even think to answer my mom's question.

Four did another one of his famous double takes when he saw me, as if he couldn't believe that I was here, even though the mall is more my element than it is his. He pulled something out of his pocket and placed it in Nita's hand, and whatever it was made her happy enough to kiss him on the cheek and walk somewhere else. When she was gone, Four eyes returned to me and he didn't look away once in the entire time that it took him to close the distance between himself and my mom and me.

**-Four's POV-**

I almost didn't recognize her at first, which is why I had to look again. I just saw her no more than a dozen hours ago, so when the hell did she have time to get herself a black eye? She had a mask on last night, some frilly black thing that I wish she would have done without, but from what I could see under it, her face was clear. Whoever gave her the black eye must have done it after she left the party. I know it wasn't during, or I would have seen it. I would have stopped it.

Her face fell and she shuttered when she noticed me, which kind of hurt, but only made me want to talk to her more. I needed to hear the story behind the bruise.

Nita's grip tighten around my arm; I almost forgot that I was with her. I knew Tris wouldn't feed me the story if I tried to talk to her while Nita was around, and to be honest, I didn't really want Nita here myself. We've had our fair share of fun during the past couple of weeks, but lately she'd been getting on my nerves. All she was capable of talking about was the last party she went to, and how she wanted skip college and dive head first into a modeling career. She was always judging people like her opinion mattered, and to put it bluntly, she was a bitch.

I dug through my pocket until I found two quarters and dropped them into Nita's hand.

"Get yourself a gumball," I ordered, nodding to the gumball machine down the alley of the mall.

Nita squealed an annoying squeak, sounding much too excited about a gumball for someone about to graduate high school, kissed my cheek, and did as I told her to do. I rolled my eyes. Nita was easy in more ways than one.

Through the crowd, I found Tris again, and I kept my eye on her as I made my way over. She looked nervous. I mean, she was always timid around me, but today her irrational fear seemed to be on overdrive. Only once I reached her did I notice that she was with someone else.

Tris opened her mouth to say something but the other woman spoke first.

"Hello," she said, offering her hand. "I'm Natalie, Tris's mother."

Tris's cheeks turned pink and she touched her forehead as she scanned her eyes over anything but me. I don't know why she was so embarrassed, but I wanted to make a good impression on her mom, so I took Natalie's hand in mine and told her my real name. Before she could take her hand back, I raised it to my lips- a move that I picked up from Uriah- and planted a soft kiss on her knuckles.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," I assured, and she bared her white teeth at me in a smitten grin.

Natalie fanned herself with the hand I just kissed, and to my amusement, Tris blushed even harder.

"I'll be in the food court," Natalie announced, rubbing both of Tris's shoulders. "Don't be too long."

With that being said, she patted my arm and scurried around us to get to the food. Tris finally looked at me. My mood instantly fell when I could see more detail of the bruise under her eye. Whoever hit her really got her good.

"Fou-" She began, but I cut her off.

"What the hell happened to you?" Without thinking, I brought my hand up and cradled her cheek with my palm, using my thumb to stroke the dark blue and purple patch on her face. She closed her eyes and almost looked relaxed for a second, but the serenity ended as soon as it started and she took a step away from me. I let my hand drop, remembering that she had a boyfriend anyway, and mentally kicked myself for once again not being able to keep my hands off of her.

She hadn't answered my question yet, so I repeated it. "What happened?"

Out of all the times I've been around Tris, all the times that I've caught her gaping at me, I've never seen her this uncomfortable around me before. She shifted her weight from each foot every other moment, and our eyes would only meet briefly before she would glance away again. I wanted to wrap my fists around her shoulders to hold her still, but touching her at all would be way out of line. As much as I wished that she wasn't in a relationship, I didn't want to disrespect her. Or her boy. But mostly her.

"Nothing happened." Her voice was so soft that I barely heard her over the constant hum of the other sounds of the mall.

"Black eyes don't just come out of nowhere, Tris," I said.

"It was stupid," she continued. "Some drunk kid at the party accidentally elbowed me. It was an accident."

I narrowed my eyes at her as I concentrated on what she just said. When I asked her to go outside with me that night, she was fine, and I know _I_ wasn't the one who elbowed her. When we went back inside I saw her go straight to her boyfriend's lap. I could never admit this out loud, but I kind of kept tabs on her for the rest of the night. From when she joined her friends on the couch, to when she won an impressive three games of beer pong in a row, up to when she left the party around midnight. She never left _his_ side. If someone elbowed Tris in the face, I suspect her boyfriend would have stepped up to the plate and kicked the kid's ass. Accident or not, I know I would have. Hell, I would have done it even though she barely considered me a friend. But I didn't get in a fight that night, and I didn't see anyone hurt Tris, which can only mean one thing: She just lied to me.

"Are you sure?" I gave her a chance to change her answer.

But all she did was nod. She looked like she was in pain, and I got the impulse to hold her small pretty face in my hand again, but I strained to resist it. Contrary to what Tris thought about herself on her first day of training, she wasn't weak. She was clearly strong enough to take a hit, and strong enough to deal with her emotions. She didn't need any pity from me.

"You know, for someone who claims to not be dating Nita, you sure do spend a lot of time with Nita," Tris said, changing the course of our conversation to a lighter subject.

I looked over my shoulder to see Nita smacking obnoxiously on stiff piece gum and flirting with a muscle head whom I've never seen before. Good. He should keep her distracted for a little while.

"We really aren't dating," I told her. "We just... hang out."

"'Hang out,'" she mocked, holding her fingers up to make air quotes.

My face started to burn, and I imagined that this was how Tris felt when her mom introduced herself to me. I didn't want to talk to Tris about my sex life, you know, unless she was involved in it.

"Are we still on for Tuesday?" she asked hopefully.

"Are you sure you're up for it?" Her eye would probably be a little better by then, but the last thing I wanted her to do was re-hurt herself.

Tris looked up at me innocently through her eyelashes, and I swear a piece of my heart exploded.

"Absolutely," she chirped. "You know, if you didn't cancel on me last week, maybe this could have been avoided," she teased, waving her hand in front of her face.

I knew she was joking, but I suddenly felt extremely guilty for going back on our plans. Regardless of how serious she wasn't being, she had a point. I decided then that next Tuesday I would teach her how to block a punch.

"Toby!" Nita's irritating voice. God, I hated that nickname.

Tris cupped her hands over her mouth to stifle a laugh. I peeked over my shoulder again, and groaned when I saw Nita skipping in our direction.

"You should get back to your girl," Tris dug her elbow into my ribs. "_Toby_."

I pushed her shoulder lightly and she stumbled two steps to the side, giggling like a schoolgirl. "Don't ever repeat that," I warned her with a laugh. She raised her hands in mock defense.

"Baby, I'm hungry," Nita whined as soon as her fingers came in contact with my arm.

"I just got you gum," I joked, earning a snort from Tris.

Nita shot her a dirty look. "Let's just go."

"There's a food court here," I argued.

"Ew, I'm not eating mall food," Nita complained.

I rolled my eyes, letting them land on Tris, who was giving me a sarcastic thumbs up.

"I have to go find my mom anyway," Tris said.

I nodded, like hearing that she had to leave didn't affect my happiness at all.

"Tuesday?" I asked for confirmation.

She smiled with her perfect lips pressed together. "Tuesday," she agreed.

I couldn't take my eyes off of her as she walked away from me.

**-Tris's POV-**

Surely I had a death wish. One rule, Peter gave me. One request. _I told you not to talk to Four._ The words kept replaying in my head the entire time Four spoke to me, but I couldn't focus on them long enough to do anything about it. I tried to in the beginning, when Four first approached me, but talking to him felt as natural as breathing, and I couldn't deny myself the comfort that I found when I was around him. And when he touched my face... ugh. It was so similar to the way my mom did it when she first saw the bruise, so nurturing. I practically melted into his palm.

I found my mom at one of the many tables aligned in the food court. I sat in the empty seat across from her and drooled over the tray of Chinese food that she already had prepared for me.

"So who was he?" She asked with a mouth full of noodles.

"Four," I answered meekly.

"He said his name was Tobias."

"His name is Tobias, but everyone calls him Four." Every except Nita, I guess. I grinned, remembering his reaction to the stupid nickname she gave him.

"He's very handsome," she pointed out. As if I don't already know that.

I tried to finish my lunch in silence, but my mom wasn't having it. "Are you two friends?" she asked between bites.

I don't know, were we friends? I barely knew him. But we had to be more than not-friends. "Not really," I decided on.

"Well he definitely likes you."

"Mom!"

"What!" She defends. "I saw the way he was looking at you."

Was Four looking at me a certain way? I doubted it. All moms exaggerated about that kind of thing.

"Peter better keep an eye out," she remarked and gave me a wink. I placed my fork over the half eaten plate of noodles, simultaneously loosing my appetite.

My pocket started to vibrate, and I struggled my hand through it until I was able to whip my phone out. The screen was lit with an alert for a new text message. Speak of the devil...

_Come over. We still have to pick up my car._

Not even a 'please.' The nerve of this guy. After what he did last night, he still expected me to do him a favor, for us to fall back into our normal routine. He didn't even apologize for hurting me this time, didn't even try. When I dropped him off from the party, he refused to give me a second look before getting out of the car and slamming the door behind him. Not that I'm complaining. I didn't want to talk to or look at him either.

The thing that bothered me the most was how premeditated his last attack was. He was acting totally normal at the party: Genuinely laughing, holding my hand, kissing me in front of people while we played beer pong. He had everyone, including me, fooled into thinking that we were the same happy couple that we haven't been in months. He _punched_ me, his girlfriend, the one person who he was suppose to treat with love and tenderness, and then he showed no remorse for his actions.

I dropped my phone on the table without sending him a reply, wondering when my life turned into such a mess. When did I become pathetic enough to stay with a man who hits me?

"Everything okay, Beatrice?" My mother asked with concern. I just realized I was breathing heavy, and she must have picked up on it too.

"Yeah," I lied, then felt disgusted with myself. Peter has also turned me into a liar.

I picked my phone back up and clenched my jaw as my fingers flew over the touch-screen keyboard.

_You're on your own. I'm not doing this anymore._

**Aside from Divergent, what other fanfics are you guys into? I used to read a lot of Stelena/Delena ones when I went through my Vampire Diaries phase (I'm still kind of in that phase) but recently I've been unhealthily obsessing over Harry Styles and I think I might have to write one about him next cus my Lord that boy is bae as fuck.**


	8. Chapter 7

**Wrote this entire chapter in like two hours cus I just really freakin' love writing this story. And I love anyone who supports it. This weekend is gonna be kind of weird for me, a lot of friends are coming home from college and I want to try to see them all before they leave, so I don't know when I'll be able to update but I'll try to make it soon! I think I've been doing better at updating more frequently? But anyway, please don't hate me for this chapter (or do, bad emotions are better than no emotions.) One of my favorite pre-Fourtris moments takes place toward the end of this chapter. You'll probably know it when you see it ;) **

"Ta-da," I sang as I raised the monstrosity of a gift that I just finished wrapping. The edges of the decorative paper were crumbled messily and the ribbon I attempted to tie turned out lopsided and unruly. It was ugly, but when it came to presents, who really cared about what was on the outside? My mom looked up from her own wrapping project to peer over at mine, and the face she made was meant to be taken as an insult.

"I need to teach you how to wrap," she laughed.

I picked a loose bow up off of the ground and threw it at her. She giggled and tossed it back at me, hitting me lightly in the chin. Thank God these bows weighed close to nothing; I don't know how much more abuse my face could handle.

Our brutal bow battle (try saying that five times fast) was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell ringing through the house. My mom threw her hands up to surrender, and I pounded mine in the air above in victory. She stood from the couch and smushed the sticky side to one of the bows against the top of my head as she walked by me to answer the door.

I found a gift tag under the pile of other wrapping supplies, filled it out, and tied it to the askew ribbon of my present.

"Beatrice," my mother called, though her voice sounded much closer than it would be if she was still at the front door. I turned to look over my shoulder, and I saw her standing in the threshold of the living room. A second later, _he_ appeared next to her, right as she was saying, "Peter's here."

Crap. I knew he wouldn't just accept the text I sent him earlier about our relationship being over, but I was hoping that I would at least have the rest of the weekend to avoid him.

He advanced a step toward me and it took everything in me not to back away. "Can we talk?" He asked with no hint of anger.

I took the stupid bow out of my hair and pushed myself to my feet. We needed to talk, I knew that, but what I didn't know was what to say. I darted my eyes to my poor mom who had no idea what was going on. Her brows were furrowed and her bottom lip was pulled between her teeth. It was the face she made when she was trying to figure something out; I would know because that's where our similarities started. Peter shifted his weight from one foot to the other, waiting impatiently for me to say something. I glanced back and forth at the two of them, torn between not wanting to be alone with Peter and not wanting to fight in front of my mom.

"Can you give us a minute, Mom?" My mouth said the words that my brain wasn't ready for. My mom nodded hesitantly and left the room.

Now that we were alone, Peter came closer to me. I planted my feet to the ground and refused to let my fear get the best of me. I was literally _afraid_ of my boyfriend. How sad.

Peter pulled his phone out of his pocket, pressed a few buttons, and held it out so I could see the screen. It was opened to our text conversation. "What the hell is this?"

I crossed my arms, struggling to maintain eye contact with him. "Read it again if you really don't know."

"Drop the attitude," he commanded, taking another step toward me. We were only separated by about five feet now. "You think you can just break up with me over a text message? Or even worse, you think you can bail on taking me to get my car when it was your bright idea to leave it there in the first place?"

Well that was an interesting way to list his priorities. I'm glad that not taking him to his car was "even worse" than breaking up with him.

"Sorry, guess we're both guilty of breaking promises," I said sarcastically.

He slanted his eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"Remember in the hallway last week?" My voice was starting to crack out of frustration. "I showed you the last bruise you gave me, and you told me that it wouldn't happen again."

Peter paused while he thought back to the right day.

"You said that you were sorry- that you just freaked out, and that I didn't deserve to be treated like that."

"You don't," he sighed.

I shook my head. "You obviously don't think that since you hurt me again."

"Don't tell me what I think! I know that I-" He stopped mid-sentence and looked around the room.

"What, Peter? You what?" As sick as it might be, I wanted to hear him say it. I wanted to hear him acknowledge his mistake.

"I _hit _you," he whispered loudly. I immediately regretted insisting that he say it when the possibility of my mom overhearing sank in. "It was wrong, so wrong. I know that. I was just so... mad at you for deliberately going behind my back and talking to Four-"

"I didn't 'deliberately' go behind your back," I argued. "Four and I were just in the same place at the same time."

"How do you even know him?" Peter's voice raised immensely with this question.

I took a deep breath to stall from answering. "Just... from... school," I said lamely. I knew I sounded suspicious. No wonder Peter didn't trust me.

"Whatever," he said, surprising me by how easily he dismissed my response. "You at least understand where I'm coming from, don't you? How would you feel if I continued to hangout with a girl after you specifically asked me not to speak to her?"

"I wouldn't like it!" I admitted. "But you didn't _ask_ me not to talk to Four, you demanded it."

"All the more reason not to hang out with him!"

"No, Peter!" We were both yelling now. "You don't get to control who I do or don't associate with! Especially not now that we're broken up!"

"We are _not_ broken up!"

"Yes, we are!"

Peter swiftly closed the gap between us. I shuddered when I felt his hands on my shoulders, afraid of what would happen next, but that's when everything slowed down. He didn't hit me again, didn't shove me against any walls. He just held me where I stood, looking raptly into my eyes as I tried to evade looking into his.

"You can't do this to me, Tris," he spoke softly. He was no longer fuming.

"Do what?" I challenged.

He brought one of his hands up to stroke his thumb over the cheek that wasn't diminished with a bruise. The sweet gesture felt foreign coming from him. I liked it better when it was Four's hand cupping my face.

"You can't leave me," Peter desperately continued. "I need you, babe. I know I'm not the best at always showing it, but I love you."

His words hit me right in the heart. It seemed like forever ago since Peter last told me he loved me, even though he made sure I'd say it to him whenever he wanted to hear it. I didn't know what to think of his unexpected confession.

"I love you," he repeated with sincerity. Damn it.

I swallowed something that's been stuck in my throat since I saw Peter standing in the living room. A deep breath escaped my lungs, and before I could tell myself not to, I wrapped my arms around his waist. He relaxed under my touch and pulled me into his chest.

"Please don't leave me," he begged, his words tearing at my heartstrings once again. Peter's never been this vulnerable in front of me before, and it hurt to see him like this. Yes, he should feel bad for his actions, and yes, I deserved to hear an apology. It would take me longer than one day to get over his violent outburst, but was it really something that I wouldn't be able to forgive him for at all?

"I need to think," I said into his neck.

"Why? It's not that hard. Just take me back."

I rolled my eyes, the soft spot I had for vulnerable Peter threatening to disappear. I pushed against his shoulders so we were no longer in an embrace.

"You need to realize that I'm not a punching bag," I rebuked. "I need to be convinced that nothing like this will ever happen again." I felt the urge to slap myself for basically repeating that same thing that I told him last week.

"It won't," Peter promised without wasting a second to think about it.

"I've heard that before," I scoffed. "So I don't believe you. I'll take you back once you can prove to me that you have your anger under control."

Peter's eyes fluttered closed and he nodded. Was he agreeing with me that easily?

"I'll talk to someone, I'll go to anger management classes." He opened his eyes again, revealing that they were glazed with... tears? Oh God, was he about to cry? "Whatever it takes, baby."

Seeing Peter cry would hurt more than any physical pain he's caused me. I flashed him the biggest smile I could manage, which, because of the circumstances, was still pretty small, and the corners of his lips curved up as well.

"I don't think we should see each other until then," I said, knowing that this brief moment of contentedness we were both feeling was about to end.

His mouth fell into a frown. "No," he promptly disagreed.

"Please, Peter, don't argue with me on this."

"Why can't we still see each other?"

I sighed heavily at his inability to understand. "Because I need some space."

He took two steps away from me and held his hands up. "There, you have your space."

I rolled my eyes again. "You know what I mean."

He groaned and crossed the short distance between us, gripping my hips firmly in his hands. I flinched out of instinct as he approached me, then reprimanded myself for it. Being scared of him only put a pothole in the road to making this relationship work.

"You're sure that's what you need? Space?" He lowered his chin so he could look up at me.

I definitely did need space, I just wasn't sure if that was _all_ I needed to be able to forgive and be with Peter again. Part of me wanted us to work through this, to go back to the way we were before Peter started being angry all the time. The other part of me doubted that we'd ever be able be those people again. I used to lay in bed at night and imagine endless scenarios of what my future could possibly hold with Peter. I've pictured myself as his fiance, as his wife, as the mother of his children. Now I couldn't even imagine him taking me out on a date. We've fallen so far away from who we used to be and how we used to care about each other. Sometimes I felt like we only stayed together out of habit rather than requited love for one another. But if Peter was willing to make a change, willing to fight for me until we redeveloped the relationship that we once had, then who was I to deny him that opportunity?

"Yes," I finally said. "And for you to convince me that these assaults are over."

"Okay," he breathed, resting his forehead against mine. I closed my eyes, letting the rare sense of comfort that I feel around him take over.

Without permission, he pressed his lips to mine. I enjoyed the kiss, I really did, until the bridge of his nose accidentally dug into the injury that trailed under my eye. I pulled away from him and clenched my fists until the shock of pain turned into a bearable pulse.

"Sorry," Peter said.

"You didn't mean to." I rubbed his shoulder. "But I think you should go."

Thankfully, he didn't put up a fight. I walked him to the front door, where we said our good-byes, and I stood in the door frame as he pulled his car out of the driveway. Someone else must have taken him this morning to get it from Uriah and Zeke's house.

I closed the door once he was gone and went back to the living room to hide my father's present. Before I headed upstairs with the gift in my hand, I stopped to look at the family portrait that was framed and hung over the mantelpiece. The picture was taken a little over two years ago, and even though the time difference wasn't evident in my parents' faces, it was easy to see how much younger Caleb and I looked in the photo compared to now. The shot was taken while Caleb was going through a rebellion phase: his hair was long and covered his forehead, and he insisted on wearing jeans for the picture while everyone else was dressed in formal attire. I was going through my awkward phase at the time, a virgin to makeup with a beaming brace-faced smile. Regardless to how I felt now about ever going out in public like that, I was genuinely happy two years ago on the day that the picture was taken. Looking at it now, I could see just how perky I used to be through the squint-eyed grin plastered on my bare face. I looked so giddy that it was hard to resist smiling back at the girl in the portrait.

My eyes started scanning over the other framed pictures scattered neatly over the walls of the living room. My favorites were the ones taken when the people in the pictures weren't paying attention. There was one of baby Caleb sitting on my dad's shoulders at a little-league baseball game, and the one of my mom and five-year-old me sitting in the kitchen as she taught me how to ice a cupcake. I looked at them all until eventually my eyes settled on the only mirror in the room. The nostalgic and blissful lightness I felt moments ago vanished as soon as I made eye-contact with the battered girl's reflection.

When did I start looking so... bad? There was the black eye, obviously, but there was also things about my face that I hadn't noticed until now, like the way the whites of my eyes were veined with red, and dark circles under my eyes that made me look like I hadn't slept in years. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, but that wasn't enough to excuse the deepness of the dark pits. My cheeks looked bonier than usual, but not in the super model kind of way. I looked completely worn down.

I glanced back to the happier and younger version of myself in the family portrait, coming to the heartbreaking realization that I wasn't that girl anymore.

* * *

><p>"Last one," Four ordered.<p>

I let out an unladylike groan and finished my fifth "last" push up. A bead of sweat dripped from my forehead and landed on my fingers.

"Can I please be done now?" I complained through clenched teeth.

"Sure," Four said. "All you had to do was ask."

My arms caved beneath me and I sighed as my muscles finally got to relax. I rolled onto my back and welcomed the garage air-condition as it blew over my hot skin.

"You're a dick." I meant to say it while laughing, but I was too exhausted to put in the effort of a giggle.

"You'll thank me later," he said, not at all phased by my name calling.

"I think you should be doing the push ups with me."

He raised his eyebrows. "Is that what you think?"

"Yeah. That's what I have to do when I lead the warm ups before volleyball practice." I cringed at my own mention of volleyball practice. I went to it yesterday and my legs were still angry at me for working them so hard.

"Hmm," Four hummed, seeming to consider my suggestion. "Maybe next time."

I rocked my body until I had enough momentum to sit up. I was still catching my breath from the obnoxious amount of push ups Four made me do, but I wanted to keep moving while I had the adrenaline. "What now?"

"Hop up," Four instructed, but this time he offered me his hand. I swatted it away, which made him smile, and stood up on my own.

"In honor of you getting elbowed in the face," he said with a smirk, "today you're going to be learning how to block a punch."

I rolled my eyes at his 'elbowed in the face' comment, but silently cheered that this was what he decided to teach me today. Or at least what he would attempt to teach me. If today went anything like last Tuesday, I wouldn't learn a thing.

Four positioned himself in front of me in a complicated way that made it look like he was about to throw a punch. And that's exactly what he did. He stopped his fist before it was close enough to reach me, but even before I knew he was too far away, I didn't flinch. For whatever reason, I trusted Four. I knew he would never seriously hit me.

When he was done testing his punches, he straightened up and came around me. His hands found my shoulders and he dug his thumbs into the crease between the blades as he pulled the top part of my shoulders back with his other fingers. He was dangerously close to the bruise back there that hadn't completely healed yet, but I was thankful when he unknowingly managed not to touch it.

"Your posture is horrible," he teased.

"Your face is horrible," I shot back, not meaning a word.

He chuckled, his breath steaming deliciously at the back of my neck. "I have sources that would tell me otherwise."

Once my shoulders were where he wanted them to be, he moved his hands down until one was on the small of my back and the other was pressed flat against my stomach. "Your core's not too bad," he said, not necessarily as a compliment, but more as an observation. His palms shifted horizontally until they were cupping my obliques. "Keep tension here."

No problem. I kept tension everywhere as long as I was around him.

"Spread your legs, Tris," he instructed, sending an unanticipated electrocution throughout my entire body.

_What?_

"Excuse me?" I squeaked.

I felt his laugh against my neck again. "On the mat, just..." He held my hips as he kicked my feet out for me. They landed on the mats at about shoulder-length apart, in a way that was not nearly as sexual as Four made it sound. I cursed myself for even thinking that Four could have meant it in an unprofessional manner. He pressed his knees against the backs of mine to make them slightly bend.

He let me go and stood in front of me again, closer than he was last time, and mimicked my stance. "Hands up," he said, raising his own.

I did as I was told, but not correctly apparently, because Four pushed both of my elbows down, tucking them against either of my sides. I felt awkward like this, probably because I've never stood like this before, but at the same time something about it felt right. I felt sturdy, and secure.

"Do as I do," he instructed.

I watched him as he circled one of his arms out in slow-motion, keeping his elbow close to the bottom of his ribcage, and turning his torso to move with the rest of his body. His grace made the block look easy, but I was sure that I wouldn't execute it nearly as well as he did. I tried, though, repeating the steps that Four just showed me, and when I was done, he looked surprisingly impressed.

"You're a natural," he praised. "Now with the other."

He gave me an example with his other arm and I did my best to copy him again.

"That was good," he said with a smile, but I detected a hint of sarcasm so I went to punch him in the arm. He blocked my punch effortlessly, ironically using the technique we were just going over, and before I knew it, he had me turned around with one arm behind my back. "Not that good," he whispered. Jokes on him though, because all this meant was that I got to be held against him, which I found more as a reward than a punishment.

He released me all too soon, and I confidently returned to the stance that he previously put me in.

* * *

><p>I picked up today's lesson much easier than I did last Tuesday's. Four was gentle with his demonstrative punches, but I was pretty quick at blocking them when I needed to. I lost my balance a few times, which Four blamed on the "lack of tension" in my core, but toward the end of the session it was easier for me to keep myself stable.<p>

Four didn't rush me to leave this time either, but I wanted to get home to my parents before dinner, so I ended departing right after our lesson was over anyway. He walked me to the door again, like the gentleman that he is, and I did something that I'm still debating on whether was stupid or not.

Four stopped in the threshold, putting his hands on either side of the frame and adorably leaning forward while propping himself up on one leg.

"How's your eye, by the way?" He ducked his head to get a better look at the nice bruise on my face.

"A little better." It was, but it was still the first thing anyone noticed about me. Christina freaked out when she saw it, and when I fed her the same lie that I've been telling everyone else, she got even more upset, threatening to beat the hell out of whoever that guy was. I defended the imaginary man by telling her that he was drunk beyond comprehension, and that he apologized a dozen times before running to the bathroom to puke his liver up.

Four nodded his agreement. "So, Thursday?"

I smiled at this new ritual of ours. "It's a yes from me, but my teacher's been known to play hookie."

He laughed, and it was such a beautiful sound that I had to laugh, too. "I learned my lesson the first time," he said, and his radiant smile faintly simmered as he looked over my black eye again.

"You know it's not actually your fault, right?" I crossed my arms.

He glanced at the wood on the floor of the porch and back up at me. "I know, but-"

The same way that he did to me at the mall, I brought my hand up cradle to his cheek, but I added my thumb to his mouth to quiet him. He froze in the middle of his sentence with his lips parted, and I caught his gaze dart to my mouth before returning to my eyes.

"No buts," I scolded him. "This had nothing to do with you." Okay, so that was a lie. He was actually a very big reason behind it. But it didn't have to do with him the way he thought it did.

"Okay," he said against the pad of my thumb.

Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around his neck. I probably would have had to stand on my tiptoes if he wasn't already leaning forward in the doorway. My nose greedily took in the smell of Four's masculine scent, and I probably lingered in the one-sided hug a little too long for comfort, but when I pulled away from him, he was smiling.

"Thursday," I told him as I turned to walk down the steps of the porch.

The reality of what I just did didn't hit me until I was seated behind the steering wheel of my car. I just hugged Four. I just had my arms around the only person that Peter didn't want me to hangout with. And the person didn't even hug me back.

I checked my phone for anything new, but all I had was a few texts from Christina and a missed called from my mom. I was relieved to find nothing from Peter. I hadn't heard from him since Saturday, when I told him to give me some space, and I guess that was what he really was doing. Good. That's what I asked for. That's what I got.

Something was nagging at me, though. Peter was doing the right thing by staying out of contact with me, but shouldn't I secretly be wishing that he would text me anyway? In all of the romance books I've read, all of the love movies I've seen, the girl never really means it when she tells the guy to stay away from her. They're just code words for "fight for me," but of course the guy doesn't catch on, and he really does stay away from her, and then both sides of the couple are supposed miserable until one of them decides that enough is enough and they come running back to each other.

But me, I didn't think about Peter once while I was with Four. I didn't feel bad for defying him until I was out of Four's presence, and even now, I still don't regret seeing him. Maybe I was a rarity in the female species, and I did actually want space from Peter for a while before I couldn't take it anymore and simply _had_ to run back to him. Maybe. All I know right now is that I don't miss Peter. And as long as Four's around, I can't remember why I agreed to give Peter another chance in the first place.

**I think Change by BANKS is a suitable song for Tris and Peter. They're my own couple and they bother me.**


	9. Chapter 8

**A couple of people have pointed out that Four is suppose to have blue eyes, and since I mention his eyes again in this chapter, I thought now would be a good time to explain myself and hopefully avoid anymore confusion about it. I base the descriptions of the characters off of the actors who portray them in the movie, so since Theo James has brown eyes, so does the Four in my story. I'm sorry if the eye color is such a tremendous let down for you, but I'm hoping that the more important parts of the story (like the plot, maybe, I don't know) make up for the distraction. Either way, thank you guys so much for keeping up with Take Care. I'm very grateful for the followers and appraising reviews, you guys are seriously the sweetest bunch of people and I just wanna hug every single one of you. With that being said, here's Chapter 8**.

Three days have come and gone since Saturday, and I still haven't heard a word from Peter. He's been doing surprisingly well at this whole "space" thing, considering how against it he was when I first brought it up. Come to think of it, I haven't even seen him once at school this week. I hope he's not purposely skipping classes and sabotaging his GPA just to maintain an even greater distance from me.

Mr. Eaton trudged through the classroom door five minutes after the lecture was already supposed to be underway. He mumbled his apologies- as if a bunch of high school students were upset that a few minutes of class were wasted by talking instead of learning- and began unpacking his briefcase behind the wide mahogany desk in the front of the room.

Now that I've been spending more time with Four, similarities between the father and son were starting to stand out. They had the same full lips, the same slightly pointed ears, and even the way they stood with their arms puffed out from their body was identical. If I were to ever stumble upon Mr. Eaton's high school yearbook picture, I had the feeling he would look exactly the way that Four does now, the only difference being Mr. Eaton's light blue eyes- polar opposites from the dark chocolate irises that perfect Four's puppy-like features.

Christina's giggle snapped me out of my father/son comparison. I looked over to find her cheeks flushed and her nose buried deep into her phone. Her thumbs flew across the keypad as she replied to whatever was so funny.

"Who are you texting?" I whispered, but she was too distracted by the devise to acknowledge me. "Christina," I said a little louder.

Her eyes finally left the screen as they fluttered to meet mine. "Huh?"

"Who are you texting?" I repeated.

"Oh." She laughed again. "It's Uriah."

Uriah? She didn't tell me that they still talked.

My heart sank a little as I thought back to Will's face at the Halloween party when he saw Christina indirectly reject his drink offer to play a round of beer pong with Uriah instead. I've never seen Will- no, _any _man- look as heartbroken as he did in that defeated moment.

Was that how Peter felt when he saw me with Four?

"What do you think about him?" Christina surprised me by asking.

"What do _you_?" I fired back. My opinion of Uriah wouldn't be important to her if he was just another friend.

She shrugged her narrow shoulders and Mr. Eaton began teaching, ending my interrogation.

* * *

><p>After class we met up with Will and Al at Christina's locker. Will's been AWOL since the party- avoiding Christina no doubt- and he wasn't his usual cheery self when his crush and I approached him.<p>

"Oh, so you're not dead," Christina sarcastically remarked, reaching for the lock on her locker. She dialed the combination and tugged, but it was stuck of course. Once again.

I watched Will's face light up as he realized Christina's statement was directed toward him. But his expression fell as quick as it came, and within seconds he was back to brooding.

"Surprised you even noticed my absence." His tone was sharp and rude.

Al and I exchanged the same knowing look.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Christina demanded, clearly offended. She failed at another attempt to break the lock off its hinge.

Will rolled his eyes. "Nothing. It just amazes me that you weren't thinking about yourself for a second."

Christina shot him one hell of a glare. "_Excuse _me?"

Here we go.

"You're excused," Will said like a child.

"Why are you being such an asshole?"

"Oh _I'm_ an asshole?"

"Did I stutter?"

Their voices raised with every unanswered angry question. Al nudged me with his elbow and leaned his head closer to mine so he could be heard over their bickering.

"Did you ever find out the name of the guy who gave you that?" He jerked his head to gesture toward my black eye.

I knew Al was just trying to be a good friend, but I wished people would stop asking about it, because all it did was force me to lie even more. "No," I told him. "I have no idea. I don't think he goes to this school."

Al nodded like he understood, and I felt sick for taking advantage of how easily he trusted me.

"I bet Peter's looking all over for that guy," Al said. "I know I'd be pissed if I was him."

Little did he know...

I distracted myself from responding by watching the verbal boxing match between our other two friends. Christina had begun talking with her hands. Will's face was slightly redder and the veins in his neck were more prominent than ever. Between smart-ass comebacks, Christina aggressively pulled at her lock for the third time, but it still denied her a reaction. In the middle of a comment about how conceited Christina was, Will shut his mouth and reached around her to yank the lock apart himself. It practically crumbled under his fist, and he placed it in Christina's palm once it was off, then finished his insult without missing a beat.

"Where is Peter?" I finally whispered to Al.

He looked toward the ceiling as he thought about it. "Last I saw him was after first period. He was talking to-" he paused and looked down the hall- "them."

His gaze led to Uriah and Zeke and their circle of friends. Peter was nowhere in sight.

Christina slammed the metal door of her locker, shouted one last crude thing at Will, then stormed off without saying good-bye to me or Al. I decided not to chase after her since I'd see again her at volleyball practice in ten minutes. She walked right up to Uriah, and he welcomed her into the group by draping his arm around her shoulder. Will hadn't taken his eyes off of her yet.

"I hate that guy so much," he mumbled.

Al tried to comfort the boy by patting him on the shoulder, but Will shook him off and turned to walk away, looking like the life had just been completely drained out of him.

* * *

><p>Christina did really well at practice that day.<p>

The rest of the team could tell that she was fueled by anger, but nobody was brave enough to question the cause. Even I didn't bring it up. We just passed the ball to her when we could and let her blow off some steam in the best way possible.

Her mood was noticeably better after practice, but I still wasn't sure if I should ask her about the fight with Will. If she wanted to talk about it I would be more than happy to listen, but I didn't want to piss her off all over again by trying to play therapist. She stayed behind in the locker room to take a shower again, and I waited until I was sure that she was under the water to change out of my sweaty jersey.

The bruise on my shoulder blade had shrunken from softball to golf ball size, and the hue of it had pretty much faded back into my normal skin color. The one on my hip was finally gone. Now my only concern was the mark under my eye, but even that one was on a speedy road to recovery. In a few days, I should be me again.

Chicago's weather was beyond bipolar. It was so hot two weeks ago that I broke a sweat just from stepping outside, but today the wind was frigid against my bare limbs, and I regretted not grabbing a sweater this morning like my mother insisted. I crossed my arms to try to preserve my small amount of body heat that I barely produced, thinking that the walk to my car was going to be a miserable one.

I had to cross the road again because construction was still being done to that certain section of the sidewalk. The shops on the other side reminded me of the promise I made to myself that I hadn't yet lived up to. The white gown that I adored in the window of one of the stores was no longer hung over the manikin, and was instead replaced by a less appealing red dress that was decorated with an excessive number of sparkles.

Down the sidewalk, Four stepped out of the martial arts studio, looking particularly tempting in his black Hopewell High sweatshirt and a dark beanie. Oblivious to my presence, he leaned against the brick wall of the building, retrieving a lighter from his hoodie pocket and a cigarette from behind his ear.

Wait a minute... a cigarette?

The health freak who scolded me for not drinking enough water has been smoking cancer sticks this entire time?

He lit the end of the cigarette and took a long, slow drag.

"Are you _smoking_?" I asked in disbelief.

If he was surprised, it didn't show. His eyes calmly took in my body, flattering me even though I was angry. "No," he said, tilting his head back to blow a trail of smoke into the air. "It's a metaphor."

I closed the short distance between us and punched him in his arm; he made no effort to block it. "Don't 'Augustus Waters' me! I can't believe you smoke!"

He laughed and raised the stick to his lips again.

I almost smacked it out of his hands. "You understand that those are so bad for you, right?"

He inhaled another hit and released it into the air again before answering me. "Are you saying that because it's common knowledge or because you care about me?"

What a loaded and unexpected question.

In the same pocket that he pulled the lighter out of, the outline of a box the size of a cigarette carton was peaking through the fabric. "Both," I answered honestly, then invaded Four's personal space by pulling the box out, and sure enough, it contained the rest of the pack of disgusting things.

Up until today, I've never smoked anything before in my life, so my next action surprised even me. I plucked one of the cigarettes out from the bundle and tucked the rest of them back into Four's pocket.

"What are you-" Four began.

I swiped the lighter out of his hand and burned the tip of the white stick between my lips, taking in my first ever hit of tobacco. The smoke instantly filled my lungs- quicker than I thought it would, burning everything as it expanded- and being an amateur at this, I started coughing. It was a painful fit of coughing, one that seemed to begin again as soon as it was over, and the cigarette tasted worse than it smelled. How did people get addicted to this crap?

"Tris," Four whispered with a hint of humor.

My lungs finally cleared of smoke, allowing me to talk. "Every time you smoke, I smoke." I declared. This was a trick I learned from my dad when he wanted to get my aunt to quit the nasty habit. I knew it was a long shot to assume that Four cared about my health more than he cared about his own, but I had to try something. "It tastes good," I told him.

He laughed, and I challenged him by taking another drag. This one thankfully went a lot smoother.

"Give it here." He held out his hand.

I turned my back to him, bringing the cigarette to my mouth for a third repulsive hit. His arm came around me and pulled the stick away from my lips before I could inhale any more smoke. I spun on my heels to try to grab it back.

"I'm not finished!" I protested.

"Yes you are," he warned. He wasn't playing along anymore, he was being serious.

"You are such a hypocrite."

He shook his head. "I'm putting both of them out," he explained, dabbing the ends of the cigarettes against the brick wall until they were no longer glowing.

It worked? It worked.

"Was that your last one?" I crossed my arms.

He dropped the stubs to the ground and stepped on them with the soles of his shoes. "I don't know, but it was yours."

"That depends on you."

"Then yes, okay? We both just had our last one," he huffed.

I couldn't help but feel a little proud of myself. He was probably lying just to get me off his case, but he at least terminated one cigarette on my behalf. That was one less that he would use to poison his body.

"When did you start smoking?" I asked softly.

He stared at me uncomfortably. "If I talk about it I'm just gonna want another."

Fair enough.

"How was, uh-" he looked me up and down- "volleyball?"

Embarrassment flooded my cheeks, remembering what he said about the spandex shorts the last time I wore them around him. "It was fine." I decided to leave out the part about Christina annihilating everything that came her way. "Our first game is next week. You should come."

Four raised his eyebrows and hid his hands in his pants pockets, leaving his thumbs hanging out. "Should I?" he teased.

I looked at my smallish size six feet. "Yeah. I mean, I think we have a pretty good team this year. Plus it's a home game."

I risked a peek at Four, who nodded like he was considering it.

"I'm a starter," I threw in for encouragement.

His lips drew away from each other as they transformed into a grin. "If you want me there, I'll go."

There was no denying the butterflies that fluttered around my stomach at his acceptance of my invitation. "I do want you," I said, then all the butterflies simultaneously burst into flames. "There," I quickly added. "I want you there." What the hell is wrong with me.

He seemed to be amused by my awkwardness, but God bless him for not calling me out on it.

The bell that announced the opening of the door chimed, and Eric leaned through the frame. "Ten minutes, Four," he said, which was probably an innocent statement, but Eric's voice had a way of always making him sound angry. Before he headed back inside, Eric's eyes darted to the lower half of my body and the infamous smirk took over his face. "'Sup, Spandex?"

Four rescued me from having to reply by grumpily saying, "I'll be there in a minute."

Eric stole a last glance at me before disappearing behind the bricks.

**This chapter is so short and I hate that but I really wanted to post something tonight because I've already taken forever to update and this upcoming week is going to be busy for me. My life is honestly such a bore but lately events have been happening, like this week I'm visiting my brother in Philadelphia for Thanksgiving and also going to NYC for a day (I've never been to either one of these places so I'm really excited), plus finals are coming up so I have a lot of studying to do WHILE I'M ON VACATION MIGHT I ADD. I hate college with a burning passion. That's not true. Only my math class bc I fucking suck at math. I think I'm ranting just to make it look like this update is longer than it actually hahaaaa. But yeah, I hope everyone has an awesome Thanksgiving and that you get to spend it with the people you love the most! Please be safe, and eat as much turkey as you can!**

**Btw, Google search "Theo James in a beanie." You won't be disappointed.**


	10. Chapter 9

**HELLO MY ANGELS I'M BACK~~~ I wanted to use that word in honor of the VS fashion show that went on today. Cannot freakin' wait to watch it next Tuesday errrmagerd. But anyway, here's another short little update. I don't know why my chapters are getting so sparse all of a sudden, like I have all of these ideas and I feel like the drama is finally picking up, but when I tried to add in a little more to this chapter it just felt like too much was going on in it. So I figured a small update would be better than nothing, right? Right. So here:**

-Four's POV-

The four o'clock class would be here soon. Eric gave me a smug smirk when I walked back into the heated studio. He was wrapping black tape around his knuckles, and when he was done he tossed the rest of the roll to me. I let it drop to my feet without any effort to catch it.

"You and Spandex, huh?" Eric remarked like a smart ass.

"Tris," I quickly corrected. "Her name's Tris."

"Okay?" Eric said as if it didn't matter. "Either way, you're still trying to bone her."

His choice of word made me cringe. Eric may have been a once-held-back twelfth grader, but he had the vocabulary and maturity level of a prepubescent middle school boy. I almost wanted to punch him in the face for making my interest in Tris sound so childish.

"I'm not trying to do anything to her," I said, even though it wasn't all that true. I would rock Tris's world if the opportunity presented itself. But then I remembered the cockblocking reason why that opportunity wouldn't come. "She has a boyfriend."

He huffed out a throaty laugh. "'Cause that's stopped you before, right?"

I frowned because he made a valid point. My self-control and good morals may have been known to disappear whenever sex was laid on the table. I'd say a good fraction of the girls I've been with had boyfriends at the time of our affairs. Even Nita was with someone else when she came onto me at one of Zeke's parties, and I was too weak (and drunk) to shoot her down. She broke up with him the next day, expecting me to welcome her into my love life with open arms, but I wasn't looking for anything serious, and she wasn't exactly girlfriend material.

I probably could have had Tris if I came on a little stronger, but as badly as I wanted her and her tight little body, it didn't feel right to try and steal her from a guy she seemed to be happy with. If something were to happen between us it had to be fair, because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if she ended up regretting it.

Eric disappeared into the office and the first student walked in and bowed at the door before stepping onto the mats. Hector was his name, and not to be biased, but he was my favorite out of the entire class. Not only because he was the little brother of my friend Lynn, but because he was always on time to his lessons, and he was a hard worker who never once complained about anything. At twelve years old and only starting with us two years ago, he was already just a few months away from earning his brown belt.

I held my fist out as he came closer, and when he bumped his tiny knuckles against mine, I noticed they were pretty scabbed up.

"What'd you do to your hand?" I asked, kneeling down to one knee so we could be more at eye level, though now I was shorter than he was.

He examined his knuckles and looked away shyly. "I got in a fight at school."

I arched my eyebrows at him. Hector was a great fighter when he was being tested on it, but for the most part the kid was borderline pacifistic. "With who?"

"Tanner Mitchel," he spat.

I had no idea who the hell Tanner Mitchel was, but if Hector felt the need to hit him, I'm sure he had a decent reason.

"Did he start the fight?" I had to ask, being his _self defense_ instructor and all.

Hector nodded. That's what I figured.

Wondering what any mentor would want to know, I lowered my voice and asked, "Did you kick his ass?"

Hector bobbed his head again, this time a smile spreading under his nose.

"'Atta boy," I laughed, and held my palm up for him to high-five like a champ.

* * *

><p>The class was easy to teach that day since Eric and I were basically just going over the same moves that we taught them all last week. I felt a long lasting moment of pride when Hector won in a sparring match between him and a kid who was a solid four inches taller than him. When the session was over, I told him how awesome he was, and he thanked me before his sister came inside and interrupted our moment.<p>

"Hey twerp," Lynn said to her kid brother while running her fingers through strands of his hair. He beamed up at her and for a second they looked more like a mother and son. "How'd it go?"

Hector shrugged modestly. "Fine."

"More than fine," I offered. Someone had to brag about him. "He improves every time I see him."

"Aw, look at you!" Lynn pinched Hector's cheeks together and he snapped his head back hoping to get out of her grip, but it didn't work. She wrapped her arms around his neck from behind and smushed her face hard against his. "My baby brother is a little bad ass."

Hector stood annoyed and limp, shooting me glares of desperation while his sister smothered him.

"Would it count as self defense if I punch her in the throat?" He pleaded. Lynn retaliated by squeezing him tighter.

I laughed, and said, "I'll allow it."

Lynn released him and stepped away. "Hec, don't you dare!"

Hector and I shared a laugh before Lynn checked her watch and let out a sigh to signal she was ready to leave. The kid walked away from us to go grab whatever things he brought with him, and I suddenly felt really uncomfortable being alone with Lynn. Did she know about Hector's fight with that Tanner kid? Should I bring it up? It probably wasn't a big deal- I started fights all the time when I was his age, and I turned out okay. Sort of.

I decided not to tell her. If Hector wanted her to know, I would leave that confession up to him. Besides, he wasn't some puny kid that needed his sister to fight his bullies for him.

"Have you talked to your dad lately?" Lynn asked, bringing me out of my thoughts.

My heart dropped and I took a deep breath. I couldn't help it- it was a sensitive subject. "Yeah, I did."

She raised her brows in surprise. "When?"

I looked down at my feet, then at our reflections in the mirror wall, then at Hector, at Eric, then back at Lynn. "Almost two weeks ago," I told her. "He wanted me to come over for dinner, but I didn't stay that long."

"Well what did he say?"

I glanced at Hector again, who now had a backpack over his shoulder and was making his way toward us from across the room. I chomped down on my bottom lip as I thought back to the last night I attempted to act civilized with my father.

"Nothing worth repeating," I answered. I knew it wasn't enough for her, but she didn't have time to argue.

"Ready?" Hector asked, half of his attention on the screen of his phone.

Lynn softened her eyes at me before draping her long arm around her brother's shoulders, and turning them both around to head out the door.

"Eaton," Eric called when he and I were the only ones left in the room. I peered at him over my shoulder. "Got a stoge?"

The pack in my pocket suddenly weighed a million pounds, and my mind instantly wandered back to Tris and her bold attempt to get me to stop smoking.

It's not that I've never been told to quit before- Nita constantly threatened to hold out sexual favors until I dropped the habit, but unfortunately for Nita, I didn't give a damn about her opinion, and she always ended up under me anyway. But Tris- nobody's done what she's done. And even if they did, I doubted it would have worked as well for them as it did for her. It was like I didn't realize how bad cigarettes are for a person until I saw one between her lips. When she took her first hit, I knew she wouldn't like it. I didn't like my first cigarette either. I coughed the same way that she did and I couldn't understand why people pursued such an unhealthy habit, but unlike Tris, I finished my first one. I smoked it down to the filter and then I had another, because for whatever reason, it relaxed me. Shortly after losing my tobacco virginity, I purchased my own carton of Marlboro blacks, and the consequences of smoking never really crossed my mind again. Until today, obviously.

I couldn't let Tris follow in my self destructive footsteps. A cigarette looked wrong held between her perfect plump lips. Sexy as hell, but so very wrong. Tris was an athlete, and (though under-hydrated) a healthy one at that, and it physically hurt to watch her damage her body just because she wanted me to stop harming mine.

"Do you have one or not?" Eric said a little louder.

I snapped out of my thoughts and fished the pack out of my pocket. I was tempted- God was I tempted- to have one last smoke for good measure, but the image of Tris puffing on one of the cancer sticks was lodged in the back of my mind. I knew there was no possible way for her to find out if I did light one, I mean, unless I told her, or she was still lurking around outside. The idea of Tris spying on me to make sure I wasn't sneaking a stoge was enough to make me grin. But the guilt I would feel from keeping something like that from Tris when she placed so much trust in me outweighed the brief desire to give my lungs the nicotine they were hankering for. So I tossed the carton of Marlboro blacks to Eric and told him to have at it. His eyes widened like he hit the jackpot, and in the tobacco world he kind of did, considering the pack was still pretty new and only two cigarettes were missing from it.

Eric stepped outside to burn a few minutes off of his lifespan, and I was left with a half hour to kill until the six o'clock class began. I knew if I stood around waiting I would eventually cave and bum one of my smokes off of Eric, so I threw the hood of my sweatshirt over my head and decided to distract myself by going on a walk.

The wind in the Windy City was especially cold tonight. The temperature had to have dropped at least ten degrees since I was last outside, and I could see my breath fog in front of me every time I let it out.

I didn't have a destination in mind; I was just walking wherever my feet took me. I passed by Hopewell's campus, then backtracked a couple of feet so I could go down the stone path that lead to the gym and the football field. With the craving for a cigarette clouding my mind, I almost forgot about Tris inviting me to her volleyball game next week. I was glad that she did. She's seen me in my element so many times- at the studio, at my house. I was always showing off to her, and now I finally had the chance to watch her do what she was good at.

Tris deserved a damn fan club, but I couldn't help but feel jealous that I wouldn't be the only guy there to cheer her on. I wouldn't even be the main one, assuming her boyfriend would be attending as well. What was his name again? Something stupid.

_Coming from the guy who's nicknamed after a number_.

With a quick peek through the window in the door, I strolled passed the gym and hopped over the short fence bordering the football stadium. I jogged up the aluminum stairs of the bleachers, a soft metallic orchestra playing under my feet, until I got a little less than half way up and stopped in my tracks. Two dark figures sat to the far left of me, the sloppy sound of lips being pulled apart and smacked back together prominent in the otherwise quiet atmosphere.

The way I saw it, I had two options: purposely disrupt the pair's idea of a romantic date just to be a dick, or try to sneak away without them noticing I was ever here. I was leaning toward option number two when I heard the female half of the couple sigh the boy's name.

"Peter."

Peter. That was it. Tris was dating Peter.

And Peter was dating Tris. But the girl he was with right now definitely was _not_ Tris.

**DUN DUN DUN!**

**Did ya see that coming? :)**

**Anywhoooo, time to bore you with details about my trip to Philly and New York :') It was so fucking cool man (literally though, did not reach 50 degrees the entire time I was up there), but like I didn't even want to come home. In Philadelphia I got to see my brother for the first time in months, and I saw SNOW and threw rock hard icey snowballs at my loved ones and then broski and I spent an entire day walking the streets of Manhattan... It was breathtaking, especially Central Park. If you've never been to New York you NEED TO GO I'M TELLING YOU. Anyway I got home Saturday morning at like 2 am and then the next day I was on the road again to Tampa to see my boy Mike Stud live and in person and MY GOD that boy is everything. If you've never heard his music before I hope you go look him up now because not only is he talented, but he's also beautiful and such a sweet guy to his fans. I got him to sign my stomach, and then I posted a picture of it on instagram and tagged him in it and he FREAKIN LIKED THE PICTURE UNFFF he's such a babe I love him. But yeah I doubt any of you actually read all of this so orange juice fairy winkle flipper nanner butt nug**.


	11. Chapter 10

**HELLUR BABIES IT'S TUESDAY AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS**

**PIZZA NIGHT**

**AND ALSO VS FASHION SHOW**

**I'm really excited for it idk about you, but I wanted to post this chapter before it started so I could watch it and then come back in a couple of hours to HUNDREDS OF REVIEWS amiright? Just kidding, I hate asking for reviews so please, only leave one if it's out of the goodness of your soul. I write Take Care for you guys but also mostly for myself cus I really enjoy it lol, so I'm gonna keep posting whether you want me to or not. **

**This chapter may be a little confusing to some, since there's kind of like a flashback within a flashback. I wasn't really sure how to go about that, but I did my best, and if there's any confusion always feel free to inbox me! Or even if you don't have a question, inbox me anyway cus I get lonely.**

**With that being said, I give you Chapter 10: **

I missed Peter.

As much as I hated to admit it, I did. I missed him. I knew I was the one who asked for space, and I was the one who put our relationship on hold, but I didn't mean for it to be terminated completely.

I've tried calling him already. Twice last night, as a matter of fact, but all the phone did was ring and ring and ring. I've always hated leaving voice mails, so I resorted to texting him, but they all went unanswered, too. I drove myself crazy as I tossed in bed, thinking about what he could possibly be doing to keep himself busy enough to ignore me.

He wasn't at school today either. Or if he was, he was still hiding from me. Either way, this was day five of not seeing him. I couldn't remember the last time I went this long without Peter. It had to have been before I knew him. Even while we were in that awkward time frame of getting to know each other, Peter and I still saw one another every day. He used to go out of his way to make sure of it.

I remembered when Peter got his driver's license three months before I did, and how he couldn't wait to start taking me home after school. I remembered when he used to show up at my house without calling first and announce that he had movies for us to watch. I remembered when Peter and I used to argue about who loved each other more. I missed the playful fights, the ones free of physical violence and silent treatments.

As I thought back to the good memories of my relationship with Peter, I started feeling like they never happened. Like they were just made up scenarios in my head starring two people I didn't know. He and I have changed so much compared to the kids we were when we were making those beloved memories, so in a way it kind of was like I _didn't_ know those people anymore.

Christina stomped up to me at my locker, and I could tell that something was wrong with her too by the resting bitch face she had on. She and Will haven't yet made up from their fight yesterday, and at this point I wasn't sure if they were ever going to. They were never going to go back to normal, that was definite. Not only because it was hard to retrieve Christina's forgiveness once she was pissed off at you, but because there's no way that Will could ever go back being her 'just friend.'

"Hey," Christina said lightly. Her eyebrows furrowed as a concerned scowl took over her face.

"Hi," I greeted back weakly. Why was she looking at me like that?

Christina, being the best friend/ mind-reader that she is, answered my unspoken question. "There's something I need to tell you." She placed her hand on my arm and pulled me away from my locker. Utterly confused, I closed it at the last second, and reluctantly followed my friend down the hall.

"Where are we going?" I asked after we exited the building. Christina's grip was still strong around my sorry excuse for a bicep.

"The football field," she answered.

Okay? Christina and I never casually took strolls along the football field, but I didn't feel like asking more anymore questions. I was drained from my lack of sleep and surplus of over-thinking last night.

I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt over my head to block the wind from nipping at my ears. It was another freezing day in Chicago, and maybe I would have enjoyed it if it numbed my insides as much as it did my outsides.

We arrived at the joke-of-a-gate surrounding the football field and climbed over it with ease. Did the school actually think that it kept out any unwanted visitors? Seriously, try something taller. Or maybe some barbed wire.

Christina led me up the stairs of the bleachers and parked us on a bench once we were about halfway up. From this view, the field looked... ugly, actually. Most of the grass was dying and turning brown, and the white lines of chalk were in desperate need of touching up.

"Why are we here?" I broke my earlier declaration to not ask anymore questions by asking yet another question. It was even colder up here surrounded by all the metal, so I covered my chest with my sleeved arms to stop myself from shivering. It didn't work.

Christina placed her hands on my lap and looked me dead in the eyes. "Something happened here last night."

For some reason, one thought immediately flew into my mind. "Did you... Did Uriah..." She narrowed her eyes every time I stammered. "Are you not a virgin anymore?"

"What!" She squealed. "No! I mean- that's not what happened."

I sighed in relief and covered my heart with my hand. "Thank God."

"Really, Tris?" She cocked her head to the side. "On the bleachers? Do you think I'd do that?"

I couldn't help but laugh. It sounded ridiculous now. "No, I guess you wouldn't."

She shook her head and quickly reversed back into the reason of why she brought me here. "It has to do with you. And someone you care about."

I gulped so loud and hard that the people in China probably heard it. This had to be about Peter. "What happened?"

Christina took a deep breath and held it in before letting it out slowly. It turned into a thin cloud in front of her mouth thanks to the coolness of the air, and I got the shortest urge to exhale so I could see my breath as well. However, her hesitation only made me more anxious.

"What happened," I repeated.

Now Christina cupped my hands in hers. For a second they actually felt warm.

"Peter was here last night," she began.

I gathered that much already.

"With another girl," she added.

Everything stopped. The birds flying through the sky froze, the flag whipping in the wind starched, and even the ants crawling on the ground stopped whatever it is that ants do to contribute to the dramatic effect.

Everything paused except for my heart, which fell into the pits of my stomach at a million miles per hour, and I wished that I could take back hearing what Christina just said. I couldn't speak, I couldn't blink. All I did was stare at her, waiting for her to feed me more information.

"Someone saw them kissing," she added.

"Who saw?" I wasn't sure how I asked that without proper brain function, but I managed.

"That's not important."

"Yes it is," I pleaded. Every minor detail was important. "They could have been lying."

"They weren't lying," Christina insisted, but I wasn't having it.

"Who," I said again, trying to hide the shakiness in my voice long enough to sound stern.

She let out a defeated sigh. "Four."

Four? Was this some kind of sick joke?

"Four," I breathed, because for some reason I needed to hear myself say it. He wouldn't lie about something like this. Four saw Peter kissing another girl, and he sent Christina to tell me about it. Okay. This was real. This was happening.

This was my karma for asking for a break. I couldn't even call this cheating since we weren't technically together.

But damn, did it hurt just as bad.

"Tris," Christina tightened her grip around my hands. "Are you okay?"

I nodded out of muscle memory since I sure as hell wasn't capable of doing it for myself.

"Do you want to hear everything that Four told me?" Chris suggested.

I nodded again, and she closed her eyes as she thought back.

* * *

><p><em>*Earlier*<em>

-Four's POV-

I need to tell Tris. I need to tell Tris. I need to tell Tris.

I can't tell Tris.

How the hell was I suppose to tell Tris?

_"Hey, yeah, just caught your shitty boyfriend makin' out with some slut, so if you need a rebound you know where to find me."_

Brilliant.

I got to school early today, I don't know why. Probably because I didn't sleep a wink last night and I was just bored of lying awake in bed. The incident with Peter was on a constant loop in my mind, plus my knuckles were bothering me from bleeding and throbbing on and off. I was so caught in my rage that I forgot to ice them when I got home.

So I left my house an hour earlier than I usually would and decided to burn off some steam by walking to campus instead of driving. I'd probably regret it when it came time to walk back home, but whatever. That was last on my list of worries this morning.

I didn't expect to see anyone else at school yet, but I was proven wrong when I saw Tris's friend, Christina, perched on the top stair of the main entrance to the office building. She was scribbling something down on a notepad, and by the looks of her facial expression, she was taking it very seriously. We had a class together (some kind of science, I think) last year, so I've talked to her before, but I don't think I would go to the extent of calling us 'friends.'

I was about to walk by her, but then I was hit again with the reminder of the news I had to break to Tris, and changed my route to head toward her instead. I was dreading that talk with Tris that was bound to happen. I was desperate to not have to be the bearer of bad news. And Christina, well, on the day that I opened her lock for her, she said so herself that she owed me one.

She didn't take her eyes off of the notepad as I approached her, which only confirmed how focused on it she was. When I got to the bottom step, I could see the pencil markings on the paper more clearly. "What are you drawing?"

Christina flinched and her eyes shot up to mine. She angled the notepad away as an initial reaction, but when she realized it was only me, it fell back into her lap. "God, Four, you scared me."

I sat beside her, careful to leave a comfortable space between us, and gazed down at her work. The drawing was of two boys, one shaded in to look dark and the other left as white as the paper. Neither of them had faces. It wasn't finished yet, but so far it was really good.

"What are you even doing here?" Christina said, her voice a little softer than before.

"Couldn't sleep," I said.

"You're telling me," she sighed and brushed the lead of the pencil over the paper to shade in the darker boy some more. "How are your tutor sessions with Tris going?"

I almost forgot about that lie. "Fine," I said. "But there's something else about Tris that you need to know."

She looked up from her sketch to narrow her eyes at me. "Okay..."

Okay. Here it goes.

"Last night- while I was on break- I went for a walk, and somehow I ended up at the football field." She nodded to tell me to keep going. "And when I got there, I saw Tris's boyfriend kissing another girl."

Christina's jaw dropped so suddenly that I thought it might have come unhinged. "WHAT?!"

"Yeah..." I bit down on the inside of my lip.

"Does Tris know?"

"No." Come to think of it, I couldn't have told her yet even if I wanted to. I didn't have her number.

Christina slammed her notebook closed and stood up, grabbing my wrist and pulling me up with her. "Show me exactly where you saw them."

I failed to see why this was necessary, but who was I to argue? I shook my wrist out of her grasp because something about Tris's friend touching me made me feel uncomfortable, but I did as she asked (well, demanded) and led her toward the scene of the crime. She cursed Peter's name the entire walk there.

"So this is where the dick-wad cheated on Tris?" Christina crossed her arms as she stood over the exact spot.

I tucked my hands into my pockets and nodded. "This is it."

"Disgusting," she mumbled. "And this probably wasn't the first time, ya know? Who knows how long he's been cheating on her."

That thought also made it's way into my head more than once last night. And the more I entertained the thought, the more it pissed me off, because all this time that Tris wasted on some piece of shit that cheated on her, she could have spent better with me.

"So what did you do?" Christina batted her eyes at me. "When you found him."

Funny story, actually...

* * *

><p>*<em>Last Night*<em>

-Still Four's POV-

There have been very few incidents in my life where I've acted without thinking. 1. When I was seven and stole a chocolate bar from a convenient store, 2. When I was fifteen: the first time I took a swing on my dad, 3. Tris, and every time I've touched her or said something remotely flirtatious to her, and 4. When I caught Peter cheating on said Tris.

As soon as I put together that it was him in front of me, kissing someone other than his girlfriend, I lost it. I flew from where I was standing and tackled Peter on the bleachers. I barely heard the scream of terror his mistress let out as I pinned him to the cold metal bench. The look on his face was priceless. I knew that I was going to enjoy beating it a pulp.

First my fist came in contact with his jaw. His head jerked roughly to the right on impact. I aimed the next punch at his nose, and I felt a pang of delight when I heard it crack under my knuckles. Tiny claws dug into my shoulders and it was then that I realized the girl was trying to pull me off of the kid. I almost pushed her away so I could continue my assault, but that's when my brain started to catch up with my body and I realized what I was doing.

Blood was pouring- and I mean gushing- out of Peter's broken nose, and the same blood was found splattered across my knuckles. I backed off of him and allowed him to sit up. His hand shot up to the bridge of his nose, but he winced when touching it only made it hurt more.

"What the fuck?!" He shouted. The blonde girl he was previously swapping spit with rushed over to him and offered her assistance, but he pushed her away and stood up on his own. He narrowed his beady eyes as he took in my appearance. "Four. Of course."

I was still breathing heavily, coming down from my adrenaline rush.

"Is this about Tris?" He had the nerve to scoff. "I knew you wanted her."

"You're right, dick, and you better believe that she'll be mine after she finds out about this." I took a step toward him and he took a step back. Good. He _should_ be scared.

"We'll see about that," he fucking challenged me.

I grabbed him by his collar and reeled his bloody face in closer to mine. "You know, she can't go back to you if you're no longer _living_."

Peter swallowed, probably with a metallic taste from the red goo dripping from his nose to his mouth.

"Stay away from Tris," I warned, as if I was were her boyfriend and he was, well, me. "And take a day off from school tomorrow to get that nose under control."

He ran his hand under his nostrils to wipe away some of the blood. I released the fabric of his shirt, letting him stumble backwards into the arms of the bimbo.

As I left the scene, I examined my cut and bruised knuckles, reminding myself to settle some ice over them as soon as I got home.

* * *

><p><em>*Christina and Four*<em>

Christina gaped at me. "Holy shit."

I looked over the bleachers and took note of the fresh red stains that stood out against the silver metal. In the story I told Christina, I left out the part about me saying Tris would be with me once she found out about Peter's affair. That was more of an "in the moment" line, and now it felt too cocky to repeat.

"You like her, don't you?" Tris's friend asked while poking her finger against my ribs.

I brought my upper lip between my teeth and squinted at the sun that lacked it's supply of warmth today. "I do."

"I knew it!" She punched my arm and it actually kind of hurt.

Kind of. Just a little.

I rubbed it anyway. "_Ow_."

"Sorry," Christina laughed. "I get violent when I'm excited."

"Why are you excited?"

"Because you like Tris! And after you tell her what you just told me, she'll totally-"

"That's the thing," I interrupted. "I was kinda hoping you would tell her."

She raised her eyebrows. "Really?"

"Yeah." She groaned inwardly in a very unladylike manner, and I decided to whip out the only ammo I had against her. "You owe me, remember?"

She closed her eyes and slapped herself in the forehead. "Damn you and your strong lock-opening arms."

* * *

><p><em>*<em>_Tris and Christina*_

-Tris's POV-

"Four likes me?" I hiccuped. Christina just went on for ten minutes with the most dramatic story of how Peter was discovered to be cheating on me, and the piece of that story that I found most interesting was the part about Four confessing feelings for me that I didn't even know he had.

Christina's face beamed at my comment. "That's what the man said."

My cheeks suddenly felt warm in the cool November air.

"What about you?" She pressed. "How do you feel about him?"

I shook my head. "I don't know."

"You have to know."

"I don't. I mean, he's obviously attractive-"

"_Attractive_," Christina exaggerated. "Tris, Four is like Adonis's twin brother. But hotter."

I rolled my eyes, even though her words had some truth to them. "I'm just.. I don't know, confused right now. I still have to talk to Peter before I think about anything else."

She raised a single eyebrow at me. "To break up with him, right?"

"Yes," I sighed. I intended to bring up a couple of other things in the process of dumping him, but Christina didn't need to know everything.

A faint bell rang in the distance, making its point that Christina and I were late to second period. Neither of us made an effort to move.

"You know what?" Christina sat up and stared at me intently. She pressed the back of her hand against my forehead, made a _tss_ sound with her tongue, and shook her hand off like my skin was a hot stove. "Tris, you're burning up!"

I touched my own head with my fingertips, feeling nothing out of the ordinary. "I'm not-"

"_Yes you are_," she said through clenched teeth, wiggling her eyebrows. "I should probably take you home. I doubt you can drive in your state of illness." She stood up and offered me her hand. I laughed and took it.

My best friend and I skipped the rest of our classes that day and got hot dogs instead.

**I freakin' love hot dogs man.**

**BUT WOOO FOUR'S FEELINGS FOR TRIS ARE FINALLY OUT IN THE OPEN AND IT ONLY TOOK... 10 CHAPTERS**

**Some heavy Fourtis moments are coming up soon guys, I promise. I hope I'm not making you doves wait too long, I just haaate with a burning passion when things are rushed so I'm tryna make ya'll savor these moments. nahmean?**

**In other news my piece of shit ex-boyfriend has been making efforts with me again because he and his other girlfriend broke up for the hundreth time in a row, and i literally just sent him a link to the song We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together by T Swift and stopped replying to him.**

**I think if Tris and I had to give one piece of advice to the world it would be this: Leave ya ex's in ya past. **


	12. Chapter 11

**I'VE TAKEN FOREVER TO UPDATE I KNOW and for that I am sorry, but I'd like to point out that in my absence, Take Care has finally reached 100 favorites and it's also getting close to 200 followers. You guys are so awesome, thank you for liking this story as much as you do. **

**And remember how I've been complaining about math and finals and all that good stuff? WELL I PASSED MY PRECALC CLASS WITH A C! CAN I GET A HECK YEAH?**

***cricket chirps in the distance***

**But yeah so now I'm on winter break and I literally have no responsibilities for like a month so I'm gonna try to update Take Care a little more often to please my babies. This chapter however was a bitch to write, and therefore took forever to get done, which is why it's being posted so annoyingly late. Excuses, excuses, I know. But here's Chapter 11 ya filthy animals:**

It took three tries and one deep breath for me to bundle up the courage to knock on Four's door. Christina and I had spent our time away from school plotting out scenarios and different approaches I could take to talking to him about everything that happened with Peter, but no amount of preparation actually- well, _prepared_ me for what was to come next.

The door handle jiggled loudly before the door was pulled open, and in the way stood the man I came to see, looking particularly handsome in his all-black workout attire.

"Hi." I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, taking in the fact that the person in front of me was the one from Christina's story. My eyes darted from his face to his evident scabbed-over knuckles- the knuckles that broke Peter's nose last night.

"Hey." He offered a small smile and stepped to the side so I could come in.

I walked all the way to the living room before turning around to face him. He had followed me and was now leaning against the threshold of the hallway we just came from, his hands dug deep into his pockets and his eyes focused on me. I scratched at my arm even though it didn't itch, and looked around the room to decide where I wanted to be when I had to bring up what we were both obviously waiting to talk about.

However, Four broke the silence before I was able to choose between the couch or a stool.

"I haven't smoked," he surprised me by saying. "Not since yesterday."

The corners of my lips curved into a genuine smile. "Good. I'm proud of you."

His smile slightly grew as well, but it disappeared all too soon. "Even after what Christina told you I did?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but paused when I realized I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. "I'm actually not thrilled that you had Christina tell me. You were the one who saw what happened, so I think you should have been the one to deliver the message."

"You're right," he complied.

"So why didn't you?"

"Because I'm insensitive." He flinched like he was about to stand up straight, but quickly returned to his position of leaning against the wall. "If you would have- if you cried, I wouldn't... I wouldn't know what to do to make you feel better. But Christina's your best friend, and she's known you longer than I have, so- she kinda seemed like the best candidate."

I rolled my eyes at his boy logic that I guess made some sort of sense. "For your information, I didn't cry."

He narrowed his eyes in disbelief, smirking prominently. "You totally cried."

"Did not!" I stepped closer to him, swatting at his arm. He laughed and caught my wrist with ease, letting his gentle hold on me linger longer than usual. "What made you react the way you did? When you saw Peter with that girl."

"I don't know," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "It just pissed me off."

"Why did it piss you off?" I took another step forward, completely involuntary, like my body was being drawn to his by some type of gravitational pull. There was something about Four getting in a fight that I just found... _hot_.

"He was being a dick to you." His gaze dipped and came back up as he realized how close I was. I almost retreated in fear that I was making him feel uncomfortable, but I stayed where I was when his hand came out and tucked a stray tangle of hair behind my ear. His palm stayed curved around my jaw and his thumb drew feather-like traces across my cheek, carefully avoiding the bruise that has almost completely faded. "You deserve so much more than him."

I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth, not entirely sure that I agreed with that. Every time Peter lashed out at me it was because I had done something to provoke him. I didn't take his side when he got into that argument with his dad, I spoke to Four when he specifically asked me not to, and I was the one who asked for space when he was making attempts to mend our tattered relationship for the umteenth time. Peter wasn't the only one at fault here; I've made just as many mistakes as he has.

But either way it had to end. No matter how well we knew each other or how long we've been together, mine and Peter's relationship was no longer beneficial. I was constantly hurting him and he consistently was hurting me. We were like two fires trying to burn each other out.

"Tris," Four whispered, bringing me out of my thoughts and back to Earth.

I blinked up at him and nuzzled my cheek into the feel of his warm hand. I liked when Four touched me. As masculine and scary as he could be, he was always careful with me- well, unless he was throwing me around on a mat, but that's a completely different situation.

He hooked his index finger around my chin and tilted my head back so I had to look directly at him. "You know that, right? That you deserve better."

I watched his lips carefully as he spoke, wondering if they felt as soft as they looked. His tongue swiped across his bottom lip to let me know that he saw what I was staring at. I held back a giggle and returned my eyes to his. He glanced at my mouth, his head already slightly leaning in, and then made eye contact with me one more time to ask for my permission.

I tried to nod but I was frozen with anticipation. One of Four's hands dropped to my waist as the one that was already by my face found its way to the nape of my neck. He pressed his forehead against mine, and the last thing I remember feeling before closing my eyes was the tip of his nose brushing against my cheek.

But I never found out if his lips were as soft as they looked, because the long desired kiss between Four and I didn't happened- thanks to yours truly.

"Wait," I whispered, my eyes shooting open to find Four's mouth literally a centimeter away from mine. He leaned away from me and furrowed his brows.

"What?" he asked softly.

I contradicted my actions by staring at his inviting lips once again. "I need to- This isn't... I have to talk to Peter first," I stammered.

"Why?" He looked even more confused.

"Just to end things. For good. I haven't talked to him yet, and I just want to make sure that everything's settled with him before you and I... well..." I laughed nervously. Before we what? Kiss? Date? How serious were Four's intentions with me?

He let out a long, disappointed sigh, and brought both of his hands to either side of my face, his forehead still resting on mine. "You're killing me, Tris," he whispered, successfully melting my heart.

I covered one of his hands with my own and gave his fingers a squeeze. "I can come back over after I talk to him," I suggested. "We can pick things up from here."

He let out an adorable chuckle. "I'd like that."

I smiled, forcing myself to pull away from him, but he reeled me back in and placed a soft kiss on my forehead.

"Don't take too long," he pleaded, though his brown puppy eyes were doing enough of that on their own.

I gave him a reassuring nod and went around him to make my way to the front door. Before I closed it behind me, I looked over my shoulder to see Four standing where I left him, only now he was facing me, a warm expression plastered on his face. It was possibly the happiest I've ever seen him before, and as I skipped down the porch steps to my car, all I could think about was how I already couldn't wait to come back to him.

* * *

><p>It took hundreds of attempts and deep breaths for me to bundle up the courage to knock on Peter's front door. As nervous as I was to talk to Four, talking to Peter was going to be a million times worse. The thought of it actually terrified me.<p>

The door swung open and at first I was relieved to be greeted by Peter's mother instead of the boy himself, but that moment of bliss swiftly passed when I saw how worn down she looked.

"Beatrice," she flashed a weak smile. "It's nice to see you, dear."

"It's nice to see you too," I said politely, and I meant it. I loved Peter's mom.

"Well please, come in," she said, stepping away from the door. I followed her inside and closed it behind me. "I assume you've heard what happened to Peter."

"I know that he got hurt in a fight," I answered, testing to see how much she knew.

She sighed in defeat. "That he did. Over something as stupid as owing someone ten dollars. Can you believe it?" She rolled her eyes. "Boys these days will use any excuse to throw a punch."

So that's what Peter told her.

Of course that's what he told her, he would never confess to doing something that made himself look bad.

"Can I see him?" I asked, trying to hide the edge in my voice.

"Sure. He's in his room." She smiled at me again and gestured toward the stairs. I thanked her before sulkily walking up them.

The door to Peter's room was closed, but I didn't feel like knocking on it. I cracked it open and poked my head through the gap. The lights were off and the TV was on and Peter was watching it from his bed, an icepack being made useless in his hand. He turned his head when he saw the door move, and the expression on his face when he saw me was unreadable. Without a word being said between either of us, I stepped in the room, leaving the door slightly opened behind me just in case.

As I approached his bed, I could see his face more clearly through the lights radiating from the TV screen, and damn, did Four really do a number to it. The skin around his nose and under his eyes were a deep shade of purple, the bridge of his nose was subtly more crooked than normal, and his upper lip was puffy and cut on one side.

I thought that seeing him like this would fill me with some kind of pride, that seeing him with the same physical damages that he's inflicted on me would make me feel complete. But that unfortunately was not the case.

Viewing him in this state only made my heart ache. He looked so... helpless- nothing like the villainous Peter I've been dealing with for the past couple of weeks.

I took a seat next to him and immediately reached for his hand that wasn't holding the icepack, but he snatched it away before I got to it.

"Why are you here?" he growled, turning his attention back toward whatever show he was watching.

"I-" _To break up with him. Say it, Tris. Break up with him._ "I wanted to see you."

He gave no reaction, and I all too easily fell back into the role of apologizing for something when I hadn't done anything wrong. "I'm sorry, Peter. For what Four did to you."

Still nothing.

"Does it hurt?"

"Obviously it hurts. You should know," he snapped.

I ignored his remark and took the icepack out his hand so I could hold it against his nose for him. He finally diverted his eyes from the television to glare at me, and when he did, he snatched the icepack away from me and threw it across the room, where it hit the wall with a loud _thump_ and landed on the floor.

"What are you mad at me for?" I had to remind myself to keep my voice down. "I wasn't the one caught cheating!"

"Cheating?!" Peter scoffed. "Don't you dare accuse me of cheating on you. You wanted space remember? We were on a break."

"That doesn't matter," I sighed. "You said that you would do whatever it takes to make things up to me. Is kissing someone else your way of doing that?"

He rolled his eyes and refused to look at me again. "I don't want to hear this shit right now. Why don't you just leave and go shack up with your new boyfriend."

"I don't have a new boyfriend, Peter."

He laughed sarcastically. "You think I don't know that you've been hooking up with Four behind my back?"

"I haven't been!" I stood from the bed out of frustration. This was it. This was my chance to end things and move on from this cycle of stress. "But maybe I should start."

That got Peter's attention. He sat up and grabbed my forearm, pulling me down so I had to sit next to him again. I tried to wiggle out of his too-strong grip, but he was in no mood to let go.

"What was that?" he warned.

"You heard me," I said, probably a little too bold for my own good.

Definitely too bold my own good. Peter's already dark green eyes went black as he pushed me off of the bed and climbed on top of me once I reached the floor. It all happened in a flash, and before I knew it, Peter had both of my wrists in one of his hands, pinning them to the ground above my head. He used his free hand to slap me roughly across the cheek. Knowing that at least his mother was downstairs, I took a breath that I would use to cry for help, but before I could let it out, Peter's palm covered my mouth... and nose.

I couldn't breathe.

I squirmed underneath him in a desperate attempt to buck him off, but nothing was working. The more I struggled, the more light-headed I began to feel and the more my lungs started to burn from lack of oxygen. I tried to talk, to tell Peter that he was going to kill me, but my voice came out muffled due to his hand and every effort only strengthened the pain in my chest.

My vision grew blurry, and seconds before I was about to pass out, Peter finally lifted his hand from my face. I inhaled the deepest gulp of air that my lungs would allow, but even that left me unsatisfied. I panted to catch up with my breath, each intake soothing the throb in my chest but making my head feel weaker and weaker.

Peter tugged on my shoulders to make me sit up, and I'm sure I resembled a bobble-head given the way I could barely hold my head up. His arms came around me and he pulled me to my feet, then guided me to his bed like I was a lifeless dummy. I blacked out when my back hit the mattress, but came back to consciousness mere seconds later, and only then did it occur to me what else Peter might think about doing to me while I was in this state of vulnerability.

He didn't, though. Peter was a monster for the way he used me as a punching bag, but rape was a line he has yet to cross, and if he didn't do it tonight he probably wasn't ever going to. He turned me until I was on my side and wrapped his arms around me from behind, pulling me closer to the curve of the front of his body. I could barely feel his breathing against my neck as I struggled to stay awake.

"I'm sorry," he whispered against my ear. "I never wanted to hurt you."

I gave up on trying to win the battle of consciousness, and my eyes closed for the final time that night. I let the overwhelming urge to pass out take over, and I quickly fell asleep to Peter repeating over and over again that I am his, and that I always will be.

**So lol because I originally had no intention for this to be an abusive Peter chapter. Things just kinda happen and I guess I wanted everyone to hate Peter a little more than they already do. Did it work? Did it did it?**

**I unfortunately don't have any cool stories to tell you guys this week, other than me getting a C in precalc. I got A's in my other three classes though, so don't you dare think that I'm usually a C average student. And the only reason that I'm so happy with a C is because I at least passed the damn class and I don't have to retake it, so now I can start taking classes that actually go toward my major :') wooo! Go to college they said, it'll be fun they said.**

**Anyway I hope you all are having a lovely week. Or at least a lovely day. I've been in bed for the majority of mine. **


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